UC-NRLF 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 


October 
Vagabonds 

by 

RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE 

The  illustrations 
by  Thomas  Fogarty 


NEW  YORK     :    LONDON 

MITCHELL    KENNERLEY 

MCMX 


Copyright  1910  by 
Mitchell  Kennerley 


To 

my  Friend 
Alexis  Fournier 


October  Vagabonds 

I      The  Epitaph  of  Summer  9 
II      At  Evening  I  Came  to  the 

Wood  13 

III      "Trespassers  will  be  ..."  18 

IV      Salad  and  Moonshine  27 

V      The  Green  Friend  32 

VI      In  the  Wake  of  Summer  37 

VII      Maps  and  Farewells  42 

VIII      The    American    Bluebird 

and  Its  Song  51 

IX      Dutch  Hollow  61 
X      Where   They   Sing   from 

Morning  Till  Night  72 

XI      Apple-Land  80 
XII      Orchards  and  a  Line  from 

Virgil  87 

XIII       Fellow  Wayfarers  98 
XIV      The  Old  Lady  of  the  Wal- 
nuts and  Others 


CONTENTS 


XV      The  Man  at  Dansville  128 

XVI      In  Which  We  Catch  up 

with  Summer  132 

XVII      Containing  Valuable  Sta- 
tistics 141 
XVIII      A  Dithyrambus  of  Butter- 
milk 153 
XIX      A    Growl    about    Ameri- 
can Country  Hotels  160 
XX      Onions,    Pigs   and   Hick- 
ory-Nuts                              168 
XXI      October     Roses     and     a 

Young  Girl's  Face  174 

XXII      Concerning    the    Popular 
Taste   in    Scenery    and 
Some  Happy  People          181 
XXIII      The  Susquehanna  187 

XXIV      And     Unexpectedly     the 

Last  191 

ENVOI  200 


October  Vagabonds 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  EPITAPH  OF  SUMMER 

As  I  started  out  from  the  farm  with  a 
basket  of  potatoes,  for  our  supper  in  the 
shack  half  a  mile  up  the  hillside,  where  we 
had  made  our  Summer  camp,  my  eye  fell 
on  a  notice  affixed  to  a  gate-post,  and,  as 
I  read  it,  my  heart  sank — sank  as  the  sun 
was  sinking  yonder  with  wistful  glory  be- 
hind the  purple  ridge.  I  tore  the  paper 
[9] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

from  the  gate-post  and  put  it  in  my  pocket 
with  a  sigh. 

"It  is  true,  then,"  I  said  to  myself.  "We 
have  got  to  admit  it.  I  must  show  this  to 
Colin." 

Then  I  continued  my  way  across  the 
empty,  close-gleaned  corn-field,  across  the 
railway  track,  and,  plunging  into  the  or- 
chard on  the  other  side,  where  here  and 
there  among  the  trees  the  torrents  of  ap- 
ples were  being  already  caught  in  boxes  by 
the  thrifty  husbandman,  began  to  breast 
the  hill  intersected  with  thickly  wooded 
watercourses. 

High  up  somewhere  amid  the  cloud  of 
beeches  and  buttonwood  trees,  our  log  cabin 
lay  hid,  in  a  gully  made  by  the  little  stream 
that  filled  our  pails  with  a  silver  trickle  over 
a  staircase  of  shelving  rock,  and  up  there 
Colin  was  already  busy  with  his  skilled 
French  cookery,  preparing  our  evening 
[10] 


THE  EPITAPH  OF  SUMMER 

meal.  The  woods  still  made  a  pompous 
show  of  leaves,  but  I  knew  it  to  be  a  hollow 
sham,  a  mask  of  foliage  soon  to  be  stripped 
off  by  equinoctial  fury,  a  precarious  stage- 
setting,  ready  to  be  blown  down  at  the  first 
gusts  from  the  north.  A  forlorn  bird  here 
and  there  made  a  thin  piping,  as  it  flitted 
homelessly  amid  the  bleached  long  grasses, 
and  the  frail  silk  of  the  milkweed  pods 
came  floating  along  ghostlike  on  the  even- 
ing breeze. 

Yes!  It  was  true.  Summer  was  begin- 
ning to  pack  up,  the  great  stage-carpenter 
was  about  to  change  the  scene,  and  the  great 
theatre  was  full  of  echoes  and  sighs  and 
sounds  of  farewell.  Of  course,  we  had 
known  it  for  some  time,  but  had  not  had  the 
heart  to  admit  it  to  each  other,  could  not 
find  courage  to  say  that  one  more  golden 
Summer  was  at  an  end.  But  the  paper  I 
had  torn  from  the  roadside  left  us  no  fur- 
[11] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

ther  shred  of  illusion.  There  was  an  au- 
thoritative announcement  there  was  no 
blinking,  a  notice  to  quit  there  was  no  gain- 
saying. 

As  I  came  to  the  crest  of  the  hill,  and  in 
sight  of  the  shack,  shining  with  early  lamp- 
light deep  down  among  the  trees  of  the 
gully,  I  could  see  Colin  innocently  at  work 
on  a  salad,  and  hear  him  humming  to  him- 
self his  eternal  "Vive  le  Capitaine" 

It  was  too  pathetic.  I  believe  the  tears 
came  to  my  eyes. 

"Colin,"  I  said,  as  I  at  length  arrived  and 
set  down  my  basket  of  potatoes,  "read  this." 

He  took  the  paper  from  my  hand  and 
read: 

"Sun-up  Baseball  Club.  September  19, 
1908.  Last  Match  of  the  Season.39 

He  knew  what  I  meant. 

"Yes!"  he  said.  "It  is  the  epitaph  of 
Summer." 

[12] 


V  $ 

r^,r 

-•*w -Vfk3*?fS5s? 


spt*^r%L  -  *E?<*!^ftL*sfr?f  *5TMT^ 

jf-rf  -t  i  ^  ^fissi^'^ff f 

^'    l^^fc^      ,    ,r^>fi& 


fa 


.1 


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^ 


CHAPTER  II 

AT  EVENING  I  CAME  TO  THE  WOOD 

MY  solitude  had  been  kindly  lent  to  me 
for  the  Summer  by  a  friend,  the  prophet- 
proprietor  of  a  certain  famous  Well  of 
Truth  some  four  miles  away,  whither  souls 
flocked  from  all  parts  of  America  to  drink 
of  the  living  waters.  I  had  been  feeling 
town-worn  and  world-weary,  and  my  friend 
had  written  me  saying:  "At  Elim  are 
twelve  wells  and  seventy  palm-trees,"  and 
so  to  Elim  I  had  betaken  myself.  After  a 
brief  sojourn  there,  drinking  of  the  waters, 
and  building  up  on  the  strong  diet  of  the 
sage's  living  words,  he  had  given  me  the 
key  to  some  green  woods  and  streams  of 
his,  and  bade  me  take  them  for  my  hermit- 
[13] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

age.  I  had  a  great  making-up  to  arrange 
with  Nature,  and  I  half  wondered  how  she 
would  receive  me  after  all  this  long  time. 
But  when  did  that  mother  ever  turn  her  face 
from  her  child,  however  truant  from  her 
care?  It  had  been  with  a  beating  heart  that 
I  had  passed  up  the  hillside  on  an  evening 
in  early  June,  and  approached  the  hushed 
green  temple,  wherein  I  was  to  take  Sum- 
mer sanctuary  from  a  wicked  world. 

But  if,  as  I  hope,  the  reader  has  no  ob- 
jection to  an  occasional  interlude  of  verse 
in  all  this  prose,  I  will  copy  for  him  here 
the  poem  I  wrote  next  morning — it  being 
always  easier  to  tell  the  strict  truth  in 
poetry  rather  than  in  prose: 

At  evening  I  came  to  the  wood,  and  threw 

myself  on  the  breast 
Of  the  great  green  mother,  weeping,  and 
the  arms  of  a  thousand  trees 

[14] 


I  CAME  TO  THE  WOOD 

Waved  and  rustled  in  welcome,  and  mur- 
mured: "Rest — rest — rest! 
The  leaves,  thy  brothers,  shall  heal  thee; 
thy  sisters,  the  flowers,  bring  peace." 

At  length  I  stayed  from  my  weeping,  and 

lifted  my  face  from  the  grass; 
The  moon  was  walking  the  wood  with 

feet  of  mysterious  pearl, 
And    the   great   trees   held    their   breath, 

trance-like,  watching  her  pass, 
And  a  bird  called  out  from  the  shadows, 
with  voice  as  sweet  as  a  girl. 

And  then,  in  the  holy  silence,  to  the  great 

green  mother  I  prayed: 
"Take  me  again  to  thy  bosom,  thy  son 

who  so  close  to  thee, 
Aforetime,  filial  clung,  then  into  the  city 

strayed — 

The  painted  face  of  the  town,  the  wine 
and  the  harlotry. 

[15] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

"Bathe  me  in  lustral  dawns,  and  the  morn- 

ing  star  and  the  dew, 
Make  pure  my  heart  as  a  bird  and  inno- 
cent as  a  flower, 

Make  sweet  my  thoughts  as  the  meadow- 
mint 

— O  make  me  all  anew, 
And  in  the  strength  of  beech  and  oak  gird 
up  my  will  with  power. 

"I  have  wandered  far,  O  my  mother,  but 

here  I  return  at  the  last, 
Never  again  to  stray  in  pilgrimage  wan- 
ton and  wild; 
A  broken  heart  and  a  contrite  here  at  thy 

feet  I  cast, 

O  take  me  back  to  thy  bosom.  .  .  *'    And 
the  mother  answered,  "Child!" 

It  was  a  wonderful  reconciliation,  a  won- 
derful home-coming,  and  how  I  luxuriated 

TIG! 


I  CAME  TO  THE  WOOD 


in  the  great  green  forgiveness!  Yes!  the 
giant  maples  had  forgiven  me,  and  the  mul- 
titudinous beeches  had  taken  me  to  their 
arms.  The  flowers  and  I  were  friends 
again,  the  grass  was  my  brother,  and  the 
shy  nymph-like  stream,  dropping  silver 
vowels  into  the  silence,  was  my  sweetheart, 
[17] 


CHAPTER  III 

"TRESPASSERS  WILL  BE  .  .  /' 

FOR  those  who  value  it,  there  is  no  form 
of  property  that  inspires  a  sense  of  owner- 
ship so  jealous  as  solitude.  Rob  my  orchard 
if  you  will,  but  beware  how  you  despoil  me 
of  my  silence.  The  average  noisy  person 
can  have  no  conception  what  a  brutal  form 
of  trespass  his  coarsely  cheerful  voice  may 
be  in  the  exquisite  spiritual  hush  of  the 
woods,  or  what  shattering  discomfort  his 
irrelevant  presence  in  the  landscape. 

One  day,  to  my  horror,  a  picnic  ruthlessly 

invaded  my  sanctuary.     With  a  roar  of 

Boeotian  hilarity,  it  tore  up  the  hillside  as  if 

it  were  a  storming  party,  and  half  a  day  the 

[181 


TRESPASSERS 

sacred  woods  were  vocal  with  silly  catcalls 
and  snatches  of  profane  song.  I  locked  up 
my  hermitage,  and,  taking  my  stick,  sought 
refuge  in  flight,  like  the  other  woodland 
creatures ;  only  coming  back  at  evening  with 
cautious  step  and  peering  glance,  half 
afraid  lest  it  should  still  be  there.  No!  It 
was  gone,  but  its  voices  seemed  to  have  left 
gaping  wounds  across  the  violated  air,  and 
the  trees  to  wear  a  look  of  desecration.  But 
presently  the  moon  arose  and  washed  the 
solitude  clean  again,  and  the  wounds  of  sil- 
ence were  healed  in  the  still  night. 

Next  morning  I  amused  myself  by  writ- 
ing the  following  notice,  which  I  nailed  up 
on  a  great  elm-tree  standing  guard  at  the 
beginning  of  the  woods: 

SILENCE! 

Speaking  above  a  whisper  in  these  woods 
is  forbidden  by  law. 

[191 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

THIS  notice  seems  to  have  had  its  effect, 
for  from  this  time  on  no  more  bands  of  ma- 
rauders invaded  my  peace.  But  I  had  one 
other  case  of  trespass,  of  which  it  is  now 
time  to  speak. 


WVftTk 

^fMvxv 


[20] 


TRESPASSERS 

Some  short  distance  from  the  shack  was 
a  clearing  in  the  woods,  a  thriving  wilder- 
ness of  bramble-bushes,  poke-berries,  myr- 
tle-berries, mandrakes,  milkweed,  mullein, 
daisies  and  what  not — a  paradise  of  every 
sauntering  vine  and  splendid,  saucy  weed. 
In  the  centre  stood  a  sycamore-tree,  beneath 
which  it  was  my  custom  to  smoke  a  morning 
pipe  and  revolve  my  profound  after-break- 
fast thoughts. 


Judge,  then,  of  my  indignant  shock,  one 
morning,  at  finding  a  stranger  calmly  oc- 
cupying my  place.    I  stood  for  a  moment 
[21] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

rooted  to  the  spot,  in  the  shadow  of  the  en- 
circling woods,  and  he  had  not  yet  seen  me. 
As  I  stood,  pondering  on  the  best  way  of 
dealing  with  the  intruder,  a  sudden  revul- 
sion of  kindness  stole  over  me.  For  here  in- 
deed was  a  very  different  figure  from  what, 
in  my  first  shock  of  surprise,  I  had  expected 
to  see.  No  common  intruder  this.  In  fact, 
who  could  have  dreamed  of  coming  upon  so 
incongruous  an  apparition  as  this  in  an 
American  woodland?  How  on  earth  did 
this  picturesque  waif  from  the  Quartier 
Latin  come  to  stray  so  far  away  from  the 
BouF  Miche!  For  the  little  boyish  figure 
of  a  man  that  sat  sketching  in  my  place  was 
the  Frenchiest-looking  Frenchman  you  ever 
saw — with  his  dark,  smoke-dried  skin,  his 
long,  straight,  blue-black  hair,  his  fine,  ra- 
ther ferocious  brown  eyes,  his  long,  delicate 
French  nose,  his  bristling  black  moustache 
and  short,  sting-shaped  imperial.  He  wore 
[22] 


TRESPASSERS 

on  his  head  a  soft  white  felt  hat,  somewhat 
of  the  shape  affected  by  circus  clowns,  and 
too  small  for  him.  His  coat  was  of  green 
velveteen  corduroy  and  he  wore  knicker- 
bockers of  an  eloquent  plaid. 

He  was  intently  absorbed  in  sketching  a 
prosperous  group  of  weeds,  a  crazy  quilt  of 
wildly  jostling  colour,  that  had  grown  up 
around  the  decay  of  a  fallen  tree,  and  made 
a  fine  blazon  of  contrast  against  the  massed 
foliage  in  the  background.  There  was  no 
mistake  how  the  stranger  loved  this  patch 
of  coloured  weeds.  Here  was  a  man  whose 
whole  soul  was  evidently — colour.  There 
was  a  look  in  his  face  as  if  he  could  just  eat 
those  oranges  and  purples,  and  soft  greens ; 
and  there  was  a  sort  of  passionate  assur- 
ance in  the  way  in  which  he  handled  his 
brushes,  and  delicately  plunged  them  here 
and  there  in  his  colour-box,  that  spoke  a 
master.  So  intent  was  he  upon  his  work  that, 
[23] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

when  I  came  up  behind  him,  he  seemed  un- 
aware of  my  presence;  though  his  oblivion 
was  actually  the  conscious  indifference  of  a 
landscape  painter,  accustomed  to  the  am- 
bling cow  and  the  awe-struck  peasant  look- 
ing over  his  shoulder  as  he  worked. 

"Great  bunch  of  weeds,"  he  said  pres- 
ently, without  looking  up,  and  still  paint- 
ing, drawing  the  while  at  a  quaint  pipe 
about  an  inch  long. 

"O,  you  are  not  the  BouF  Miche,  after 
all,"  I  exclaimed  in  disappointment. 

"Aren't  I,  though?"  he  said  at  last,  look- 
ing up  in  interested  surprise.  "Ever  at — ?" 
mentioning  the  name  of  a  well-known  cafe, 
one  of  the  many  rally-points  of  the  Quar- 
tier. 

"I  should  say,"  I  answered. 

"Well!" 

And  thereupon  we  both  plunged  into  de- 
lighted reminiscence  of  that  city  which,  as 
[24] 


TRESPASSERS 

none  other,  makes  immediate  friends  of  all 
her  lovers.  For  a  while  the  woods  faded 
away,  and  in  that  tangled  clearing  rose  the 
towers  of  Notre  Dame,  and  the  Seine  glit- 
tered on  under  its  great  bridges,  and  again 
the  world  smelled  of  absinthe,  and  pictur- 
esque madmen  gesticulated  in  clouds  of  to- 
bacco smoke,  and  propounded  fantastic 
philosophies  amid  the  rattle  of  dominoes — 
and  afar  off  in  the  street  a  voice  was  crying 
"Haricots  verts!"  My  new  friend's  talk 
had  the  pathos  of  spiritual  exile,  for,  as 
French  in  blood  as  a  man  could  be,  born  in 
Bordeaux  of  Proven9al  parentage,  he  had 
lived  most  of  his  life  in  America.  The  dec- 
oration of  a  rich  man's  house  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood had  brought  him  thus  into  my 
solitude,  and,  that  work  completed,  he 
would  return  to  his  home  in  New  York. 

Meanwhile  the  morning  was  going  by  as 
we  talked,  and,  putting  up  his  sketch-box, 
[25] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

he  accepted  my  invitation  to  join  me  at 
lunch. 

Such  was  the  manner  of  my  meeting,  in 
the  guise  of  a  trespasser,  with  the  dear 
friend  to  whom  I  had  brought  the  decisive 
news  of  the  death  of  Summer,  as  he  was 
innocently  making  a  salad,  in  antiquam 
silvam,  on  that  sad  September  evening. 


1261 


CHAPTER  IV 

SALAD  AND  MOONSHINE 

"Do  you  remember  that  first  salad  you 
made  us,  Colin?"  I  said,  as  we  sat  over  our 
coffee,  and  Colin  was  filling  his  little  pipe. 
"A  daring  work  of  art,  a  fantastic  tour  de 
•force,  of  apples,  and  lettuce,  and  wild  straw- 
berries, and  I  don't  know  what  else." 

"I  believe  I  mixed  in  some  May-apples, 
too.  It  was  a  great  stunt  .  .  .  well,  no  more 
May-apples  and  strawberries  this  year," 
he  finished,  with  a  sigh,  and  we  both  sat  si- 
lently smoking,  thinking  over  the  good 
Summer  that  was  gone. 

After  our  first  meeting,  Colin  had 
dropped  in  to  see  me  again  from  time  to 
time,  and  when  his  work  at  the  great  house 
[27] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

was  finished,  I  had  asked  him  to  come  and 
share  my  solitude.  A  veritable  child  of 
Nature  himself,  he  fitted  into  my  quiet  days 
as  silently  as  a  squirrel.  So  much  of  his 
life  had  been  passed  out-of-doors  with  trees 
and  skies,  long  dream-like  days  all  alone 
sketching  in  solitary  places,  that  he  seemed 
as  much  a  part  of  the  woods  as  though  he 
were  a  faun,  and  the  lore  of  the  elements, 
and  all  natural  things — bugs  and  birds,  all 
wildwood  creatures — had  passed  into  him 
with  unconscious  absorption.  A  sort  of  boy- 
ish unconsciousness,  indeed,  was  the  key- 
note and  charm  of  his  nature.  A  less  so- 
phisticated creature  never  followed  the  mys- 
tic calling  of  art.  Fortunately  for  me,  he 
was  not  one  of  those  painters  who  under- 
stand and  expound  their  own  work.  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  a  perfect  child  about  it, 
and  painted  for  no  more  mysterious  rea- 
son than  that  his  eye  delighted  in  beautiful 
[28] 


SALAD  AND  MOONSHINE 

natural  effects,  and  that  he  loved  to  play 
with  paint  and  brushes.  Though  he  was 
undoubtedly  sensitive  somewhere  to  the 
mystic  side  of  Nature,  her  Wordsworthian 
"intimations,"  you  would  hardly  have 
guessed  it  from  his  talk.  "A  bully  bit  of 
colour,"  would  be  his  craftsmanlike  way  of 
describing  a  twilight  full  of  sibylline  sug- 
gestiveness  to  the  literary  mind.  But, 
strangely  enough,  when  he  brought  you  his 
sketch,  all  your  "sibylline  suggestiveness" 
was  there,  which  of  course  means,  after  all, 
that  painting  was  his  way  of  seeing  and 
saying  it. 

The  moon  rose  as  we  smoked  on,  and  be- 
gan to  lattice  with  silver  the  darkness  of 
the  glen,  and  flood  the  hillside  with  misty 
radiance.  Colin  made  for  his  sketch-box. 

"I  must  make  good  use  of  this  moon,"  he 
said,  "before  we  go." 

"And  so  must  I,"  said  I,  laughing  as  we 
[29] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

both  went  out  into  the  night,  he  one  way 
and  I  another,  to  make  our  different  uses  of 
the  moon. 

An  hour  later  Colin  turned  in  with  a 
panel  that  seemed  made  of  moonlight. 
"How  on  earth  did  you  do  it?"  I  said.  "It 
is  as  though  you  had  drawn  up  the  moon  in 
a  silver  bucket  from  the  bottom  of  a  fairy 
well." 

"No,  no,"  he  protested;  "I  know  better. 
But  where  is  your  clair  de  lune?" 

"Nothing  doing,"  I  answered. 

"Well,  then,  say  those  lines  you  wrote 
a  week  or  two  ago  instead." 

"  'Berries  already,'  do  you  mean?" 

"Yes." 

Here  are  the  lines  he  meant: 

Berries  already,  September  soon, — 
The  shortening  day  and  the  early  moon; 
The  year  is  busy  with  next  year's  flowers, 
[30] 


SALAD  AND  MOONSHINE 

The    seeds    are    ready    for    next    year's 

showers; 
Through   a   thousand   tossing   trees   there 

swells 

The  sigh  of  the  Summer's  sad  farewells. 
Too  soon  those  leaves  in  the  sunset  sky 
Low  down  on  the  wintry  ground  will  lie, 
And  grim  November  and  December 
Leave  naught  of  Summer  to  remember — 
Saving  some  flower  in  a  book  put  by, 
Secure  from  the  soft  effacing  snow, 
Though  all  the  rest  of  the  Summer  go. 


[31] 


CHAPTER  V, 

THE   GREEN   FRIEND 

THOUGH  we  had  received  such  unmistak- 
able notice  to  quit,  we  still  lingered  on  in 
our  solitude,  after  the  manner  of  defiant 
tenants  whom  nothing  short  of  corporal 
ejection  can  dislodge.  The  North  wind  be- 
gan to  roar  in  the  tree-tops  and  shake  the 
doors  and  windows  of  the  shack,  like  an 
angry  landlord,  but  we  paid  no  heed  to 
him.  Yet,  all  the  time,  both  of  us,  in  our 
several  ways,  were  saying  our  farewells,  and 
packing  up  our  memories  for  departure. 
There  was  an  old  elm-tree  which  Colin  had 
taken  for  his  Summer  god,  and  which  he 
was  never  tired  of  painting.  He  must  make 
the  one  perfect  study  of  that  before  we 
pulled  up  stakes.  So,  each  day,  after  our 
[32] 


THE  GREEN  FRIEND 

morning  adoration  of  the  sun,  we  would 
separate  about  our  different  ways  and  busi- 
ness. 

The  woods  were  already  beginning  to 
wear  a  wistful,  dejected  look.  There  was  a 
feeling  of  departure  everywhere,  a  sense 
that  the  year's  excitements  were  over.  The 
procession  had  gone  by,  and  there  was  an 
empty,  purposeless  air  of  waiting-about 
upon  things,  a  sort  of  despairing  longing 
for  something  else  to  happen — and  a  sure 
sense  that  nothing  more  could  happen  till 
next  year.  Every  event  in  the  floral  calen- 
dar had  taken  place  with  immemorial  punc- 
tuality and  tragic  rapidity.  All  the  full- 
blooded  flowers  of  Summer  had  long  since 
come  and  gone,  with  their  magic  faces  and 
their  souls  of  perfume.  Gone  were  the  ban- 
ners of  blossom  from  the  great  trees.  The 
locust  and  the  chestnut,  those  spendthrifts 
of  the  woods,  that  went  the  pace  so  gor- 
[33] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

geously  in  June,  are  now  sober-coated 
enough,  and  growing  even  threadbare.  All 
the  hum  and  the  honey  and  breathless  bos- 
om-beat of  things  is  over.  The  birds  sing 
no  more,  but  only  chatter  about  time-tables. 
The  bee  keeps  to  his  hive,  and  the  be- 
wildered butterfly,  in  tattered  ball-dress, 
wonders  what  has  become  of  his  flowery 
partners.  The  great  cricket  factory  has 
shut  down.  Not  a  wheel  is  heard  whirring. 
The  squirrel  has  lost  his  playful  air,  and 
has  an  anxious  manner,  as  though  there 
were  no  time  to  waste  before  stocking  his 
granary.  Everywhere  berries  have  taken 
the  place  of  buds,  and  bearded  grasses  the 
place  of  flowers.  Even  the  goldenrod  has 
fallen  to  rust,  and  the  stars  of  the  aster  are 
already  tarnished.  Only  along  the  edges  of 
the  wood  the  dry  little  paper  immortelles 
spread  long  shrouds  and  wreaths  in  the 
shade. 

[34] 


THE  GREEN  FRIEND 

Suddenly  you  feel  lonely  in  the  woods, 
which  had  seemed  GO  companionable  all 
Summer.  What  is  it — Who  is  it — that  has 
gone?  Though  quite  alone,  there  was  some 
one  with  you  all  Summer,  an  invisible  being 
filling  the  woods  with  his  presence,  and  al- 
ways at  your  side,  or  somewhere  near  by. 
But  to-day,  through  all  the  green  halls  and 
chambers  of  the  wood,  you  seek  him  in  vain. 
You  call,  but  there  is  no  answer.  You  wait, 
but  he  does  not  come.  He  has  gone.  The 
wood  is  an  empty  palace.  The  prince  went 
away  secretly  in  the  night.  The  wood  is  a 
deserted  temple.  The  god  has  betaken  him- 
self to  some  secret  abode.  Everywhere  you 
come  upon  chill,  abandoned  altars,  littered 
debris  of  Summer  sacrifices.  Maybe  he  is 
dead,  and  perchance,  deeper  in  the  wood, 
you  may  come  upon  his  marble  form  in  a 
winding-sheet  of  drifting  leaves. 

Not  a  god,  maybe,  you  have  pictured  him, 
[35  I 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

not  a  prince,  but  surely  as  a  friend — the 
mysterious  Green  Friend  of  the  green  si- 
lence and  the  golden  hush  of  Summer  noons. 
The  mysterious  Green  Friend  of  the  woods ! 
So  strangely  by  our  side  all  Summer,  so 
strangely  gone  away.  It  is  in  vain  to  await 
him  under  our  morning  sycamore,  nor  un- 
der the  great  maples  shall  we  find  him  walk- 
ing, nor  amid  the  alder  thickets  discover 
him,  nor  yet  in  the  little  ravine  beneath  the 
pines.  No!  he  has  surely  gone  away,  and 
his  great  house  seems  empty  without  him, 
desolate,  filled  with  lamentation,  all  its 
doors  and  windows  open  to  the  Winter 
snows. 

But  the  Green  Friend  had  left  me  a  mes- 
sage. I  found  it  at  the  roots  of  some  vio- 
lets. "I  shall  be  back  again  next  year"  he 
said. 


[36] 


CHAPTER  VI 

IN  THE  WAKE  OF  SUMMER 

YES,,  it  was  time  to  be  going,  and  the 
thought  was  much  on  both  our  minds.  We 
had  as  yet,  however,  made  no  plans,  had 
not  indeed  discussed  any ;  but  one  afternoon, 
late  in  September,  driven  indoors  by  a  sud- 
den squall  of  rain,  I  came  to  Colin  with  an 
idea.  The  night  before  we  had  had  the 
first  real  storm  of  the  season. 

"Ah!  This  will  do  their  business,"  Colin 
had  said,  referring  to  the  trees,  as  we  heard 
the  wind  and  rain  tearing  and  splashing 
through  the  pitch-dark  woods.  "It  will  be 
a  different  world  in  the  morning." 

And  indeed  it  was.  Cruel  was  the  work 
of  dismantling  that  had  gone  on  during  the 
night.  The  roof  of  the  wood  had  fallen  in 
[37] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

in  a  score  of  places,  letting  in  the  sky 
through  unfamiliar  windows;  and  the  dis- 
tant prospect  showed  through  the  torn  tap- 
estry of  the  trees  with  a  startling  sense  of 
disclosure.  The  dishevelled  world  wore  the 
distressed  look  of  a  nymph  caught  desha- 
billee.  The  expression,  "the  naked  woods," 
occurred  to  one  with  almost  a  sense  of  im- 
propriety. At  least  there  was  a  cynical  in- 
decorum in  this  violent  disrobing  of  the 
landscape. 

"Colin,"  I  said,  coming  to  him  with  my 
idea.  "We've  got  to  go,  of  course,  but  I've 
been  thinking — don't  you  hate  the  idea  of 
being  hurled  along  in  a  train,  and  suddenly 
shot  into  the  city  again,  like  a  package 
through  a  tube?" 

"Hate  it?    Don't  ask  me,"  said  Colin. 

"If  only  it  could  be  more  gradual,"  I 
went  on.    "Suppose,  for  instance,  instead  of 
taking  the  train,  we  should  walk  it!" 
[38] 


IN  THE  WAKE  OF  SUMMER 

"Walk  to  New  York?"  said  Colin,  with  a 
surprised  whistle. 

"Yes!    Why  not?" 

"Something  of  a  walk,  old  man." 

"All  the  better.  We  shall  be  all  the  long- 
er getting  there.  But,  listen.  To  go  by 
train  would  be  almost  too  sudden  a  shock. 
I  don't  believe  we  could  stand  it.  To  be  here 
to-day,  breathing  this  God's  fresh  air,  living 
the  lives  of  natural  men  in  a  natural  world, 
and  to-morrow — Broadway,  the  horrible 
crowds,  the  hustle,  the  dirt,  the  smells,  the 
uproar." 

For  answer  Colin  watched  the  clean  rain 
fleeting  through  the  trees,  and  groaned 
aloud. 

"But  now  if  we  walked,  we  would,  so  to 
say,  let  ourselves  down  lightly,  inure  our- 
selves by  gradual  approach  to  the  thought 
of  life  once  more  with  our  fellows.  Besides, 
we  should  be  walking  in  the  wake  of  the 
[39] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

Summer.  She  has  only  moved  a  little  East 
as  yet.  We  might  catch  her  up  on  her  way 
to  New  York,  and  thus  move  with  the  mov- 
ing season,  keeping  in  step  with  the  Zodiac. 
Then,  at  last,  .  .  .  how  much  more  fit- 
ting our  entry  into  New  York,  not  by  way 
of  some  sordid  and  clangorous  depot,  but 
through  the  spacious  corridors  of  the  High- 
lands and  the  lordly  gates  of  the  Hudson!" 

When  I  had  thus  attained  my  crescendo, 
Colin  rose  impressively,  and  embraced  me 
with  true  French  effusion. 

"Old  man,"  he  said,  "that's  just  great. 
It's  an  inspiration  from  on  high.  It  makes 
me  feel  better  already.  Gee!  but  that's 
bully." 

French  as  was  his  blood,  it  will  be  ob- 
served that  Colin's  expletives  were  thor- 
oughly American.  Of  course,  he  should 
have  said  sacre  mille  cochons  or  nom  de  Dieu 
de  nom  de  Dieu;  but,  though  in  appearance, 
[40] 


IN  THE  WAKE  OF  SUMMER 

so  to  say,  an  embodied  "sacre"  he  seemed 
to  find  the  American  vernacular  sufficiently 
expressive. 

"Is  it  a  go,  then?"  said  I. 

"It's  a  go,"  said  Colin,  once  more  in 
American. 

And  we  shook  on  it. 


[41] 


CHAPTER  VII 

MAPS  AND  FAREWELLS 

IT  was  wonderful  what  a  change  our  new 
plan  wrought  in  our  spirits. 

Our  melancholy  was  immediately  dis- 
persed, and  its  place  taken  by  active  antici- 
pations of  our  journey.  The  North  wind  in 
the  trees,  instead  of  blustering  dismissal, 
sounded  to  our  ears  like  the  fluttering  of  the 
blue-peter  at  the  masthead  of  our  voyage. 
Strange  heart  of  man !  A  day  back  we  were 
in  tears  at  the  thought  of  going.  Now  we 
are  all  smiles  to  think  of  it,  all  impatience 
[42] 


MAPS  AND  FAREWELLS 

to  be  gone.  We  quote  Whitman  a  dozen 
times  in  the  hour,  and  it  is  all  "afoot  and 
light-hearted"  with  us,  and  "the  open  road." 

But  there  were  some  farewells  to  make  to 
people  as  well  as  to  trees.  There  were 
friends  at  Elim  to  bid  adieu,  and  also  there 
were  maps  to  be  consulted,  and  knapsacks 
to  be  packed — exhilarating  preparations. 

Our  friends  looked  at  us,  when  we  had 
unfolded  our  project,  with  a  mixture  of  sur- 
prise and  pity.  "Amiable  lunatics"  was  the 
first  comment  of  their  countenances,  and — 
"There  never  was  any  telling  what  the  artis- 
tic temperament  would  do  next!"  Had  we 
announced  an  air-ship  voyage  to  the  moon, 
they  would  have  regarded  us  as  compara- 
tively reasonable,  but  to  walk — to  walk — 
some  four  or  five  hundred  miles  in  America, 
of  all  countries,  a  country  of  palace  cars  and 
lightning  limited  expresses,  not  to  mention 
homicidal  touring  automobiles,  seemed  like 
[43] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

— what  shall  I  say? — well,  as  though  one 
should  start  out  for  New  Zealand  in  a  row- 
boat,  or  make  the  trip  to  St.  Petersburg  in 
a  sedan-chair. 

But  there  were  others — especially  the 
women — who  understood,  felt  as  we  did,  and 
longed  to  go  with  us.  I  have  never  met  a 
woman  yet  whose  face  did  not  light  up  at 
the  thought  of  a  walking  tour,  and  in  her 
heart  long  to  don  Rosalind  clothes  and  set 
forth  in  search  of  adventures.  We  thus  had 
the  advantage,  in  planning  our  route,  of  sev- 
eral prettily  coiffed  heads  bending  over  our 
maps  and  guide-books  with  us. 

'Tour  hundred  and  thirty  miles,"  said  one 
of  these  Rosalinds,  whose  pretty  head  was 
full  of  pictures  of  romantic  European  trav- 
el. "Think  what  one  could  do  with  four 
hundred  and  thirty  miles  in  Europe.  Let 
us  try,  for  the  fun  of  it." 

And  turning  to  a  map  of  Europe,  and 
[44] 


MAPS  AND  FAREWELLS 

measuring  out  four  hundred  and  thirty 
miles  by  scale  on  a  slip  of  paper,  she  tried 
it  up  and  down  the  map  from  point  to  point. 
"Look  at  funny  little  England!"  she  said. 
"Why,  you  will  practically  be  walking  from 
one  end  of  England  to  the  other.  See,"  and 
she  fitted  her  scale  to  the  map,  "it  would 
bring  you  easily  from  Portsmouth  to  Aber- 
deen. 

"And  now  let  us  try  France.  Why,  see 
again — you  will  be  walking  from  Calais  to 
Marseilles — think  of  it!  walking  through 
France,  all  vineyards  and  beautiful  names. 
Now  Italy — see!  you  will  be  walking  from 
Florence  to  Mount  Etna — Florence,  Rome, 
Naples,  Palermo." 

And  so  in  imagination  our  fair  friend 
sketched  out  fanciful  pilgrimages  for  us. 
"You  could  walk  from  Gibraltar  to  the  Py- 
renees," she  went  on.  "You  could  walk 
[45] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

from  Venice  to  Berlin;  from  Brussels  to 
Copenhagen;  you  could  walk  from  Munich 
to  Budapest;  you  could  walk  right  across 
Turkey,  from  Constantinople  to  the  Adri- 
atic Sea.  And  Greece — see!  you  could  walk 
from  Sparta  to  the  Danube.  To  think  of 
the  romantic  use  you  could  make  of  your 
four-hundred-odd-miles,  and  how  different 
it  sounds — Buffalo  to  New  York!" 

And  again  she  repeated,  luxuriating  in 
the  romantic  sound  of  the  words:  "Con- 
stantinople to  the  Adriatic!  Sparta  to  the 
Danube!— Buffalo  to  New  York!" 

There  was  not  wanting  to  the  party  the 
whole-souled,  my-country-'tis-of-thee  Amer- 
ican, who  somewhat  resented  these  Euro- 
pean comparisons,  and  declared  that  Amer- 
ica was  good  enough  for  her,  clearly  inti- 
mating that  a  certain  lack  of  patriotism, 
even  a  certain  immorality,  attached  to  the 
[46] 


MAPS  AND  FAREWELLS 

admiration  of  foreign  countries.  She  also 
told  us  somewhat  severely  that  the  same 
stars,  if  not  better,  shone  over  America  as 
over  any  other  country,  and  that  American 
scenery  was  the  finest  in  the  world — not  to 
speak  of  the  American  climate. 

To  all  of  which  we  bowed  our  heads  in 
silence — but  the  frivolous,  European-mind- 
ed Rosalind  who  had  got  us  into  this  trouble 
retorted  with  a  grave  face:  "Wouldn't  you 

just  love,  dear  Miss ,  to   walk  from 

Hackensack  to  Omaha?" 

Another  voice  was  kind  enough  to  ex- 
plain for  our  encouragement  that  the  trav- 
eller found  in  a  place  exactly  what  he 
brought  there,  and  that  romance  was  a  per- 
sonal gift,  all  in  the  personal  point  of  view. 

"A  sort  of  cosmetic  you  apply  to  the  face 
of  Nature,"  footnoted  our  irrepressible 
friend. 

[47] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

Still  another  reminded  us  that  "to  travel 
hopefully  is  a  better  thing  than  to  arrive," 
and  still  another  strongly  advised  us  to 
carry  revolvers. 

So,  taking  with  us  our  maps  and  much 
good  advice,  we  bade  farewell  to  our  friends, 
and  walked  back  to  our  camp  under  the 
stars — the  same  stars  that  were  shining  over 
Constantinople. 

The  next  day,  when  all  our  preparations 
were  complete,  the  shack  swept  and  gar- 
nished, and  our  knapsacks  bulging  in  readi- 
ness for  the  road,  Colin  took  his  brushes, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  had  decorated  one  of 
the  walls  with  an  Autumn  sunset — a  sort  of 
memorial  tablet  to  our  Summer,  he  ex- 
plained. 

"Can't  you  think  up  a  verse  to  put  under- 
neath?" he  asked. 

Then  underneath  he  lettered : 
[48] 


MAPS  AND  FAREWELLS 

Two  lovers  of  the  Sun  and  of  the  Moon, 
Lovers  of  Tree  and  Grass  and  Bug  and 

Bird, 
Spent  here  the  Summer  days,  then  all  too 

soon 
Upon  the  homeward  track  reluctant  fared. 

Sun-up,  October  1,  1908. 

Some  apples  remained  over  from  our  lar- 
der. We  carefully  laid  them  outside  for  the 
squirrels;  then,  slinging  our  knapsacks,  we 
took  a  last  look  round  the  little  place,  and 
locked  the  door. 

Our  way  lay  up  the  hill,  across  the  pas- 
ture and  through  the  beeches,  toward  the 
sky-line. 

We  stood  still  a  moment,  gazing  at  the 
well-loved  landscape.  Then  we  turned  and 
breasted  the  hill. 

[40  J 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

"Allans!"  cried  Colin. 
"Allans!"  I  answered.    "Allans!  To  New 
[York!" 


[50] 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  AMERICAN  BLUEBIRD  AND  ITS  SONG 

I  WISH  I  could  convey  the  singular  feel- 
ing of  freedom  and  adventure  that  pos- 
sessed us  as  Colin  and  I  grasped  our  sticks 
and  struck  up  the  green  hill — for  New 
York.  It  was  a  feeling  of  exhilaration  and 
romantic  expectancy,  blent  with  an  absurd 
sense  of  our  being  entirely  on  our  own  re- 
sources, vagrants  shifting  for  ourselves,  in- 
dependent of  civilization;  which,  of  course, 
the  actual  circumstances  in  no  way  war- 
ranted. A  delightful  boyish  illusion  of  en- 
tering on  untrodden  paths  and  facing  un- 
known dangers  thrilled  through  us. 

"Well,  we're  off!"  we  said  simultaneously, 
smiling  interrogatively  at  each  other. 

".Yes!  we're  in  for  it." 

[51] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

So  men  start  out  manfully  for  the  North 
Pole. 

Our  little  enterprise  gave  us  an  imagina- 
tive realization  of  the  solidarity,  the  interde- 
pendence, of  the  world;  and  we  saw,  as  in  a 
vision,  its  four  corners  knit  together  by  a 
vast  network  of  paths  connecting  one  with 
the  other;  footpaths,  byways,  cart-tracks, 
bride-paths,  lovers'  lanes,  highroads,  all  sen- 
sitively linked  in  one  vast  nervous  system  of 
human  communication.  This  field  whose 
green  sod  we  were  treading  connected  with 
another  field,  that  with  another,  and  that 
again  with  another — all  the  way  to  New 
York — all  the  way  to  Cape  Horn!  No 
break  anywhere.  All  we  had  to  do  was  to 
go  on  putting  one  foot  before  the  other,  and 
we  could  arrive  anywhere.  So  the  worn  old 
phrase,  "All  roads  lead  to  Rome,"  lit  up 
with  a  new  meaning,  the  meaning  that  had 
originally  made  it.  Yes!  the  loneliest  of 


THE  AMERICAN  BLUEBIRD 

lovers'  lanes,  all  silence  and  wild  flowers, 
was  on  the  way  to  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
House;  or,  vice  versa,  the  Flat  Iron  Build- 
ing was  on  the  way  to  the  depths  of  the  for- 
est. 

"Suppose  we  stop  here,  Colin,"  I  said, 
pointing  to  a  solitary,  forgotten-looking  lit- 


[531 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

tie  farmhouse,  surrounded  by  giant  wind- 
worn  poplars  that  looked  older  than  Amer- 
ica, "and  ask  the  way  to  Versailles?" 

"And  I  shouldn't  be  surprised,"  answered 
Colin,  "if  we  struck  some  bright  little 
American  schoolgirl  who  could  tell  us." 

Although  we  as  yet  knew  every  foot  of 
the  ground  we  were  treading,  it  already  be- 
gan to  wear  an  unfamiliar  houseless  and 
homeless  look,  an  air  of  foreign  travel,  and 
though  the  shack  was  but  a  few  yards  be- 
hind us,  it  seemed  already  miles  away, 
wrapped  in  lonely  distance,  wistfully  for- 
saken. Everything  we  looked  at  seemed  to 
have  gained  a  new  importance  and  signifi- 
cance; every  tree  and  bush  seemed  to  say, 
"So  many  miles  to  New  York,"  and  we  un- 
consciously looked  at  and  remarked  on  the 
most  trifling  objects  with  the  eye  of  explor- 
ers, and  took  as  minute  an  interest  in  the 
usual  bird  and  wayside  weed  as  though  we 
[54] 


THE  AMERICAN  BLUEBIRD 

were  engaged  in  some  "flora  and  fauna" 
survey  of  untrodden  regions. 

"That's  a  bluebird,"  said  Colin,  as  a  faint 
pee-weeing  came  with  a  thin  melancholy 
note  from  a  telegraph  wire.  And  we  both 
listened  attentively,  with  a  learned  air,  as 
though  making  a  mental  note  for  some  orni- 
thological society  in  New  York.  "Bluebird 
seen  in  Erie  County,  October  1,  1908!"  So 
might  Sir  John  Mandeville  have  noted  the 
occurrence  of  birds  of  paradise  in  the  do- 
mains of  Prester  John. 

"That's  a  silo,"  said  Colin,  pointing  to  a 
cylindrical  tower  at  the  end  of  a  group  of 
barns,  from  which  came  the  sound  of  an 
engine  surrounded  by  a  group  of  men,  occu- 
pied in  feeding  it  with  trusses  of  corn  from 
a  high-piled  wagon.  "They  are  laying  in 
fodder  for  the  Winter."  Interesting  agri- 
cultural observation! 

In  the  surrounding  fields  the  pumpkins, 
[55] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

globes  of  golden  orange,  lay  scattered 
among  the  wintry-looking  corn-stalks. 

"Bully  subject  for  a  picture!"  said  Colin. 

Before  we  had  gone  very  far,  we  did  stop 
at  a  cottage  standing  at  a  puzzling  corner  of 
cross-roads,  and  asked  the  way,  not  to  Ver- 
sailles, indeed,  but  to — Dutch  Hollow.  We 
were  answered  by  a  good-humoured  Ger- 
man voice  belonging  to  an  old  dame,  who 
seemed  glad  to  have  the  lonely  afternoon 
silence  broken  by  human  speech;  and  we 
were  then,  as  often  afterward,  reminded 
that  we  were  not  so  far  away  from  Europe, 
after  all;  but  that,  indeed,  in  no  small  de- 
gree the  American  continent  was  the  map 
of  Europe  bodily  transported  across  the 
sea.  For  the  present  our  way  lay  through 
Germany. 

Dutch  Hollow!  The  name  told  its  own 
story,  and  it  had  appealed  to  our  imagina- 
tions as  we  had  come  upon  it  on  the  map. 
[56] 


THE  AMERICAN  BLUEBIRD 

We  had  thought  we  should  like  to  see  how 
it  looked  written  in  trees  and  rocks  and  hu- 
man habitations  on  the  page  of  the  land- 
scape. And  I  may  say  that  it  was  such  fan- 
ciful considerations  as  this,  rather  than  any 
more  business-like  manner  of  travel,  that 
frequently  determined  the  route  of  our  es- 
sentially sentimental  journey.  If  our  way 
admitted  of  a  choice  of  direction,  we  usually 
decided  by  the  sound  of  the  name  of  village 
or  town.  Thus  the  sound  of  "Wales  Cen- 
ter" had  taken  us,  we  were  told,  a  mile  or 
two  out  of  our  way;  but  what  of  that?  We 
were  not  walking  for  a  record,  nor  were  we 
road-surveying,  or  following  the  automobile 
route  to  New  York.  In  fact,  we  had  delib- 
erately avoided  the  gasoline  route,  choosing 
to  be  led  by  more  rustic  odours;  and  thus 
our  wayward  wayfaring  cannot  be  offered 
in  any  sense  as  a  guide  for  pedestrians  who 
may  come  after  us.  Any  one  following  our 
[57] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

guidance  would  be  as  liable  to  arrive  at  the 
moon  as  at  New  York.  In  fact,  we  not  in- 
frequently inquired  our  way  of  a  bird,  or 
some  friendly  little  dog  that  would  come  out 
to  bark  a  companionable  good  day  to  us 
from  a  wayside  porch. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  had  inquired  the 
way  of  the  bluebird  mentioned  a  little  while 
back,  and  it  may  be  of  interest — to  ornitho- 
logical societies — to  transcribe  his  answer : 

The  way  of  dreams — the  bluebird  sang — 

Is  never  hard  to  find 
So  soon  as  you  have  really  left 

The  grown-up  world  behind; 

So  soon  as  you  have  come  to  see 

That  what  the  others  call 
Realities,  for  such  as  you, 

Are  never  real  at  all; 

[58] 


THE  AMERICAN  BLUEBIRD 

So  soon  as  you  have  ceased  to  care 

What  others  say  or  do, 
And  understand  that  they  are  they, 

'And  you — thank  God — are  you. 


Then  is  your  foot  upon  the  path, 

Your  journey  well  begun, 
And  safe  the  road  for  you  to  tread, 

Moonlight  or  morning  sun. 

Pence  of  this  world  you  shall  not  take, 

Yea!  no  provision  heed; 
A  wild-rose  gathered  in  the  wood 

Will  buy  you  all  you  need. 


Hungry,  the  birds  shall  bring  you  food 
The  bees  their  honey  bring; 

And,  thirsty,  you  the  crystal  drink 
Of  an  immortal  spring. 
F591 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

For  sleep,  behold  how  deep  and  soft 
With  moss  the  earth  is  spread, 

And  all  the  trees  of  all  the  world 
Shall  curtain  round  your  bed. 


Enchanted  journey!  that  begins 
Nowhere,  and  nowhere  ends, 

Seeking  an  ever-changing  goal, 
Nowhither  winds  and  wends. 


For  destination  yonder  flower, 
For  business  yonder  bird; 

Aught  better  worth  the  travelling  to 
I  never  saw  or  heard. 


O  long  dream-travel  of  the  soul! 
First  the  green  earth  to  tread — 
And  still  yon  other  starry  track 

To  travel  when  you  re  dead. 
[60] 


CHAPTER  IS 

DUTCH   HOLLOW, 

THE  day  had  opened  with  a  restless  pic- 
turesque morning  of  gusty  sunshine  and 
rolling  clouds.  There  was  something  rich 
and  stormy  and  ominous  in  the  air,  and  a 
soft  rainy  sense  of  solemn  impending 
change,  at  once  brilliant  and  mournful;  a 
curious  sense  of  intermingled  death  and 
birth,  as  of  withered  leaves  and  dreaming 
seeds  being  blown  about  together  on  their 
errands  of  decay  and  resurrection  by  the 
same  breath  of  the  unseen  creative  spirit. 
Incidentally  it  meant  a  rain-storm  by  even- 
ing, and  its  mysterious  presage  had  prompt- 
ed Colin  to  the  furnishing  of  our  knapsacks 
with  water-proof  cloaks,  which,  as  the  after- 
noon wore  on,  seemed  more  and  more  a 
[61] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

wise  provision.  But  the  rain  still  held  off, 
contenting  itself  with  threatening  phantas- 
magoria of  cloud,  moulding  and  massing 
like  visible  thunder  in  our  wake.  It  seemed 
leisurely  certain,  however,  of  catching  us 
before  nightfall;  and,  sure  enough,  as  the 
light  began  to  thicken,  and  we  stood  admir- 
ing its  mountainous  magnificence — vast  bil- 
lows of  plum-coloured  gloom,  hanging  like 
doomsday  over  a  stretch  of  haunted  orchard 
— the  great  drops  began  to  patter  down. 

Surely  the  sky  is  the  greatest  of  all  melo- 
dramatists.  Nothing  short  of  the  cataclys- 
mal  end  of  the  world  could  have  provided 
drama  to  match  the  stupendous  stage-set- 
ting of  that  stormy  sky.  All  doom  and  des- 
tiny and  wrath  of  avenging  deities  and  days 
of  judgment  seemed  concentrated  in  that 
frown  of  gigantic  darkness.  Beneath  it  the 
landscape  seemed  to  grow  livid  as  a  corpse, 
and  terror  to  fill  with  trembling  the  very 
[62] 


DUTCH  HOLLOW 

trees  and  grasses.  OBdipus  and  Orestes  and 
King  Lear  rolled  into  one  could  hardly  have 
accounted  for  that  angry  sky.  Such  a  sky 
it  must  have  been  that  carried  doom  to  the 
cities  of  the  plain.  And,  after  all,  it  was 
only  Colin  and  I  innocently  making  haste 
to  Dutch  Hollow! 

That  Teutonic  spot  seemed  hopelessly  far 
away  as  the  rain  began  to  drive  down  and 
the  horizon  to  open  here  and  there  in  lurid 
slashings  of  stormy  sunset;  and  when  the 
road,  which  for  some  time  had  been  one  long 
descent,  suddenly  confronted  us  with  a 
rough,  perpendicular  lane,  overgrown  with 
bushes,  that  seemed  more  like  a  cart-track 
to  the  stars  than  a  sensible  thoroughfare,  we 
realized,  with  a  certain  indignant  self-pity, 
that  we  were  walking  in  real  earnest,  out  in 
the  night  and  the  storm,  far  from  human 
habitation. 

"Nature  cannot  be  so  absurd,"  said  I, 
[63] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

"as  to  expect  us  to  climb  such  a  road  on 
such  an  evening!  She  must  surely  have 
placed  a  comfortable  inn  in  such  a  place  as 
this,  with  ruddy  windows  of  welcome,  and 
a  roaring  fire  and  a  hissing  roast."  But, 
alas!  our  eyes  scanned  the  streaming  copses 
in  vain — nothing  in  sight  but  trees,  rain 
and  a  solitary  saw-mill,  where  an  old  man 
on  a  ladder  assured  us  in  a  broken  singsong, 
like  the  Scandinavian  of  the  Middle  West, 
that  indeed  Nature  did  mean  us  to  climb 
that  hill,  and  that  by  that  road  only  could 
we  reach  the  Promised  Land  of  supper  and 
bed. 

And  the  rain  fell  and  the  wind  blew,  and 
Colin  and  I  trudged  on  through  the  murk 
and  the  mire,  I  silently  recalling  and  com- 
menting on  certain  passages  in  certain  mod- 
ern writers  in  praise  of  walking  in  the 
rain.  At  last  the  hill  came  to  an  end — we 
learned  afterward  that  it  was  a  good  mile 
[64] 


DUTCH  HOLLOW 

high — and  we  stumbled  out  on  to  some  up- 
land wilderness,  unlit  by  star  or  window. 
Then  we  found  ourselves  descending  again, 
and  at  last  dim  shapes  of  clustered  houses 
began  to  appear,  and  the  white  phantom  of 
a  church.  We  could  rather  feel  than  see 
the  houses,  for  the  night  was  so  dark,  and, 
though  here  was  evidently  a  village,  there 
was  no  sign  of  a  light  anywhere,  not  so 
much  as  a  bright  keyhole;  nothing  but 
hushed,  shuttered  shapes  of  deeper  black  in 
the  general  darkness.  So  English  villages 
must  have  looked,  muffled  up  in  darkness,  at 
the  sound  of  the  Conqueror's  curfew. 

"Surely,  they  can't  all  be  in  bed  by  seven 
o'clock?"  I  said. 

"There  doesn't  seem  much  to  stay  up 
for,"  laughed  Colin. 

At  length  we  suspected,  rather  than  saw, 
a  gleam  of  light  at  the  rear  of  one  of  the 
shrouded  shapes  we  took  for  houses,  and, 
[65] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

stumbling  toward  it,  we  heard  cheerful 
voices,  German  voices;  and,  knocking  at  a 
back  door,  received  a  friendly  summons  to 
enter.  Then,  out  of  the  night  that  covered 
us,  suddenly  sprang  a  kitchen  full  of  light 
and  a  family  at  supper,  kind  German  folk, 
the  old  people,  the  younger  married  couple, 
and  the  grandchildren,  and  a  big  dog  vo- 
ciferously taking  care  of  them.  A  lighted 
glimpse,  a  few  hearty  words  of  direction, 
and  we  were  out  in  the  night  again;  for 
though,  indeed,  this  was  Dutch  Hollow,  its 
simple  microcosm  did  not  include  an  hotel. 
For  that  we  must  walk  on  another  half-mile 
or  so.  O  those  country  half-miles!  So  on 
we  went  again,  and  soon  a  lighted  stoop 
flashed  on  our  right.  At  last!  I  mounted 
the  steps  of  a  veranda,  and,  before  knock- 
ing, looked  in  at  the  window.  Then  I  didn't 
knock,  but  softly  called  Colin,  who  was 
waiting  in  the  road,  and  together  we  looked 
[66] 


DUTCH  HOLLOW 

in.  At  a  table  in  the  centre  of  a  barely  fur- 
nished, brightly-lit  room,  an  old  woman  and 
a  young  man  were  kneeling  in  prayer.  Colin 
and  I  stood  a  moment  looking  at  them,  and 
then  softly  took  the  road  again. 

But  the  inn,  or  rather  the  "hotel,"  did 
come  at  last.  Alas!  however,  for  dreams  of 
ruddy  welcome — rubicund  host,  and  capon 
turning  on  the  spit.  In  spite  of  German 
accents,  we  were  walking  in  America,  after 
all.  A  shabbily-lit  glass  door  admitted  us 
into  a  dreary  saloon  bar,  where  a  hard-fea- 
tured, gruff -mannered  young  countryman, 
after  serving  beer  to  two  farm-labourers, 
admitted  with  apparent  reluctance  that  beds 
were  to  be  had  by  such  as  had  "the  price," 
but  that,  as  to  supper,  well!  supper  was 
"over" — supper-time  was  six-thirty;  it  was 
now  seven-thirty.  The  young  man  seemed 
no  little  surprised,  even  indignant,  that  any 
one  should  be  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  sup-- 
[67] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

per-time  at  Sheldon  Center  was  half-past 
six;  and  this,  by  the  way,  was  a  surprise 
we  encountered  more  than  once  on  our  jour- 
ney. Supper-time  in  the  American  road- 
house  is  an  hour  severely  observed,  and  you 
disregard  it  at  the  peril  of  your  empty  stom- 
ach, for  no  larders  seem  so  hermetically 
sealed  as  the  larders  of  American  country 
hotels  after  the  appointed  hour,  and  no  fa- 
vour so  impossible  to  grant  as  even  a  ham 
sandwich,  if  you  should  be  so  much  a 
stranger  to  local  ordinances  as  to  expect  it 
after  the  striking  of  the  hour.  Indeed,  you 
are  looked  on  with  suspicion  for  asking,  as 
something  of  a  tramp  or  dangerous  char- 
acter. Not  to  know  that  supper-time  at 
Sheldon  Center  was  half-past  six  seemed  to 
argue  a  sinister  disregard  of  the  usages  of 
civilization. 

As  we  ruefully  contemplated  a  supper- 
less  couch,  a  comely  young  woman,  who  had 
[68] 


DUTCH  HOLLOW 

been  looking  us  over  from  a  room  in  the 
rear  of  the  bar,  came  smilingly  forward  and 
volunteered  to  do  the  best  she  could  for  us. 
She  was  evidently  the  rough  fellow's  wife, 
goddess  of  the  kitchen,  and  final  court  of 
appeal.  What  a  difference  a  good-na- 
tured, good-looking  woman  makes  in  a 
place!  'Tis  a  glimpse  into  the  obvious,  but 
there  are  occasions  on  which  such  common- 
places shine  with  a  blessed  radiance,  and 
the  moment  when  our  attractive  hostess 
flowered  out  upon  us  from  her  forbidding 
background  was  one  of  them.  With  her  on 
our  side,  we  forgot  our  fears,  and,  with  an 
assured  air,  asked  her  husband  to  show  us  to 
our  rooms.  Lamp  in  hand,  he  led  us  up 
staircases  and  along  corridors — for  the  hotel 
was  quite  a  barracks — thawing  out  into  con- 
versation on  the  way.  The  place,  he  ex- 
plained, was  a  little  out  of  order,  owing  to 
"the  ball" — an  event  he  referred  to  as  a  mat- 
[69] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

ter  of  national  knowledge,  and  being,  we 
understood,  the  annual  ball  of  harvesting. 
The  fact  of  the  lamps  not  burning  properly, 
and  there  being  no  water  or  towels  in  our 
rooms,  was  due,  he  explained,  to  this  disor- 
ganizing festival;  as  also  the  circumstance 
of  our  doors  having  no  knobs  to  them.  "The 
young  fellows  at  the  ball  did  carry  on  so," 
he  said,  chuckling  with  reminiscence  of  that 
orgiastic  occasion.  The  Sheldon  Center  gal- 
lants were  evidently  the  very  devil;  and 
those  vanished  door-knobs  provoked  pic- 
tures in  our  minds  of  Lupercalian  revels, 
which,  alas!  we  had  come  too  late  to  share. 
We  should  have  found  anything  good 
that  our  hostess  cared  to  set  before  us — so 
potent  a  charm  is  amiability — and  I  am  sure 
no  man  need  wish  for  a  better  supper  than 
the  fried  eggs  and  fried  potatoes  which  co- 
piously awaited  us  down-stairs.  As  Colin 
washed  his  down  with  coffee,  like  a  true 
[70] 


DUTCH  HOLLOW; 

Franco- American,  and  I  washed  down  mine 
with  English  breakfast  tea,  we  pulled  out 
our  pipes  and  smiled  contentment  at  each 
other. 

"Shall  we  have  a  chapter  of  the  wisdom 
of  Paragot  before  bed?"  I  said,  and,  going 
to  our  small,  carefully  selected  knapsack 
library,  I  found  the  gay-hearted  fantastical 
book  we  had  promised  to  read  together  on 
our  wayfaring;  and  so  the  day  drew  to  a 
good  end. 

Over  the  head  of  my  bed  hung  a  highly- 
coloured  reproduction  of  Leonardo's  "Last 
Supper,"  and  stuck  in  its  frame  was  a  leaf 
of  blessed  palm — by  which  tokens  I  realized 
that  my  slumbers  were  to  be  under  the  wing 
of  the  ancient  Mother.  As  I  closed  my  eyes, 
the  musical  chime  of  a  great  bell,  high  up 
somewhere  in  the  outer  night,  fell  in  bene- 
diction upon  the  darkness.  So  I  fell  asleep 
in  Europe,  after  all. 

[71] 


CHAPTER  X 

WHERE  THEY  SING  FROM  MORNING  TILL 
NIGHT 

I  AWOKE  to  the  same  silvery  salutation, 
and  the  sound  of  country  boots  echoing 
across  farm-yard  cobble-stones.  A  lantern 
flashing  in  and  out  among  barns  lit  up  my 
ceiling  for  a  moment,  a  rough  country  voice 
hailed  another  rough  country  voice  some- 
where outside,  and  the  day  slowly  coughed 
and  sneezed  itself  awake  in  the  six-o'clock 
grayness.  I  heard  Colin  moving  in  the  next 
room,  and  presently  we  were  down-stairs, 
alertly  hungry.  Our  hostess,  with  morning 
smile,  asked  if  we  would  mind  waiting 
breakfast  for  "the  boarders."  Meanwhile,  we 
stepped  out  into  the  unfolding  day,  and  the 
[72] 


WHERE   THEY   SING 

village  that  had  been  a  mystery  to  us  in  the 
darkness  was  revealed;  a  handful  of  farm- 
houses on  the  brow  of  a  solitary-looking  up- 
land, and,  looming  over  all,  a  great  cathe- 
dral-like church  that  seemed  to  have  been 
transported  bodily  from  France.  Stepping 
out  to  say  good-morning  to  some  young  pigs 
that  were  sociably  grunting  in  a  neighbour- 
ing style,  we  beheld  the  vast  landscape  of  our 
preceding  day  stretched  out  beneath  us,  mis- 
tily emerging  into  the  widening  sunrise. 
With  pride  our  eyes  traced  the  steep  white 
road  we  had  so  arduously  travelled,  and,  for 
remembrance,  Colin  made  a  swift  sketch  of 
Dutch  Hollow  huddled  down  there  in  the 
valley,  with  its  white  church  steeple  catching 
the  morning  sun.  And,  by  this,  "the  board- 
ers" had  assembled,  and  we  found  ourselves 
at  breakfast  in  a  cheery  company  of  three 
workmen,  who  were  as  bright  and  full  of 
fun  as  boys  out  for  a  holiday.  They  were 
[73] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

presently  joined  by  a  fourth,  a  hearty,  mid- 
dle-aged man,  who,  as  he  sat  down,  greeted 
us  with: 

"I  feel  just  like  singing  this  morning." 

"Good  for  you!"  said  one  of  us.  "That's 
the  way  to  begin  the  day."  His  good  na- 
ture was  magnetic. 

"Yes,"  he  laughed,  "we  sing  in  SHeldon 
from  morning  till  night." 

"Sheldon's  evidently  a  good  place  to 
know,"  I  said.  "I  will  make  a  note  of  that 
for  New  Yorkers." 

So,  reader,  sometimes  when  the  world 
seems  all  wrong,  and  life  a  very  doubtful 
speculation,  you  may  care  to  know  of  a 
place  where  the  days  go  so  blithely  that  men 
actually  sing  from  morning  till  night !  Shel- 
don Center  is  that  place.  You  can  find  it 
on  any  map,  and  I  can  testify  that  the  news 
is  true. 

And  the  men  that  thus  sang  from  morn- 
[741 


WHERE   THEY   SING 

ing  till  night — what  was  the  trade  they 
worked  and  sang  at? 

We  gathered  from  a  few  dropped  words 
that  they  were  engaged  on  some  work  over 
at  the  church — masonry,  no  doubt — and,  as 
they  left  the  breakfast-table,  in  a  laughing 
knot,  to  begin  the  day's  work,  they  suggest- 
ed our  giving  a  look  in  at  them  on  our  way. 
This  we  promised  to  do,  for  a  merrier,  bet- 
ter-hearted lot  of  fellows  it  would  be  hard 
to  find.  To  meet  them  was  to  feel  a  warm 
glow  of  human  comradeship.  Healthy,  nor- 
mal, happy  fellows,  enjoying  their  work  as 
men  should,  and  taking  life  as  it  came  with 
sane,  unconscious  gusto;  it  was  a  tonic  en- 
counter to  be  in  their  company. 

They  were  grave-diggers,  engaged  in  ren- 
ovating the  village  churchyard! 

Yes!  and,  said  our  hostess,  they  were 
making  it  like  a  garden!  It  had  been  long 
neglected  and  become  disgracefully  over- 
[75] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

grown  with  weeds  and  bushes,  but  now  they 
were  trimming  it  up  in  fine  style.  They 
were  cemetery  experts  from  Batavia  way, 
and  the  job  was  to  cost  sixteen  hundred 
dollars.  But  it  was  worth  it,  for  indeed 
they  were  making  it  look  like  a  garden! 

Presently  we  stepped  over  to  the  church- 
yard. We  should  not  have  been  human  if 
we  had  not  advanced  with  a  Hamlet-Hora- 
tio air:  "Has  this  fellow  no  feeling  of  his 
business,  that  he  sings  at  grave-making?" 
We  found  our  four  friends  in  a  space  of  the 
churchyard  fron.  which  the  tombstones  had 
been  temporarily  removed,  engaged,  not 
with  mattock  and  death's  head,  but  with 
spirit-level  and  measuring-cord.  They  were 
levelling  a  stretch  of  newly-turned  and 
smoothed  ground,  and  they  pointed  with 
pride  to  the  portion  of  the  work  already  ac- 
complished, serried  rows  of  spick-and-span 
headstones,  all  "plumb,"  as  they  explained, 
[76] 


WHERE   THEY   SING 

and  freshly  scraped — not  a  sign  of  caressing 
moss  or  a  tendril  of  vine  to  be  seen.  A  neat 
job,  if  there  ever  was  one.  We  should  have 
seen  the  yard  before  they  had  taken  it  in 
hand!  There  wasn't  a  stone  that  was 
straight,  and  the  weeds  and  the  brambles — 
well,  look  at  it  now.  We  looked.  Could 
anything  be  more  refined  or  in  more  perfect 
taste?  The  churchyard  was  as  smooth  and 
correct  as  a  newly-barbered  head,  not  a  hair 
out  of  place.  We  looked  and  kept  our 
thoughts  to  ourselves,  but  we  wondered  if 
the  dead  were  really  as  grateful  as  they 
should  be  for  this  drastic  house-cleaning? 
Did  they  appreciate  this  mathematical  uni- 
formity, this  spruce  and  spotless  residential 
air  of  their  numbered  rectangular  rest;  or 
was  not  the  old  way  nearer  to  their  desire, 
with  soft  mosses  tucking  them  in  from  the 
garish  sun,  and  Spring  winds  spreading 
coverlets  of  wild  flowers  above  their  sleep? 
[77] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

But — who  knows? — perhaps  the  dead  pre- 
fer to  be  up-to-date,  and  to  follow  the  fash- 
ion in  funeral  furnishings;  and  surely  such 
expert  necropolitans  as  our  four  friends 
ought  to  know.  No  doubt  the  Sheldon 
Center  dead  would  have  the  same  tastes  as 
the  Sheldon  Center  living;  for,  after  all,  we 
forget,  in  our  idealization  of  them,  that  the 
dead,  like  the  living,  are  a  vast  bourgeoisie. 
Yes!  it  is  a  depressing  thought — the  bour- 
geoisie of  the  dead ! 

As  we  stood  talking,  the  young  priest  of 
the  parish  joined  our  group.  He  was  a 
German,  from  Diisseldorf,  and  his  worn 
face  lit  up  when  he  found  that  Colin  had 
been  at  Diisseldorf  and  could  talk  with  him 
about  it.  As  he  stood  with  us  there  on  that 
bleak  upland,  he  seemed  a  pathetic,  symbol- 
ic figure,  lonely  standard-bearer  of  the  spirit 
in  one  of  the  dreary  colonies  of  that  in- 
domitable church  that  carries  her  mystic 
[78] 


WHERE   THEY   SING 

sacraments  even  into  the  waste  places  and 
borders  of  the  world.  The  romance  of 
Rome  was  far  away  beyond  that  horizon  on 
which  he  turned  his  wistful  look;  here  was 
its  hard  work,  its  daily  prose.  But  he  turned 
proudly  to  the  great  pile  that  loomed  over 
us.  We  had  commented  on  its  size  in  so 
remote  a  parish. 

"Yes,  I  am  proud  of  our  people,"  he 
said.  "It  is  greatly  to  their  credit."  One 
could  not  help  silently  wondering  that  the 
spiritual  needs  of  this  handful  of  lonely 
houses  should  demand  so  ambitious  a  struc- 
ture. But  the  symbols  of  the  soul  can 
never  be  too  impressive.  Then  we  said 
good-bye  to  our  friends,  and  struck  out  into 
the  morning  sunshine,  leaving  the  village  of 
song  behind. 

Yes!  in  Sheldon  Center  they  sing  from 
morning  till  night — at  grave-making! 
[79] 


CHAPTER  XI 

APPLE-LAND 

IT  was  a  spacious  morning  of  windswept 
sunshine,  with  a  wintry  bite  in  the  keen 
air.  Meadow-larks  and  song-sparrows  kept 
up  a  faint  warbling  about  us,  but  the  crick- 
ets, which  yesterday  had  here  and  there 
made  a  thin  music,  as  of  straggling  bands 
of  survivors  of  the  Summer,  were  numbed 
into  silence  again.  Once  or  twice  we 
caught  sight  of  the  dainty  snipe  in  the  mead- 
ows, and  high  over  the  woods  a  bird-hawk 
floated,  as  by  some  invisible  anchorage,  in 
the  sky.  It  was  an  austere  landscape,  grave 
with  elm  and  ash  and  pine.  For  a  space, 
a  field  of  buckwheat  standing  in  ricks  struck 
a  smudged  negroid  note,  but  there  was 
[80] 


APPLE-LAND 

warmth  in  the  apple  orchards  which  clus- 
tered about  the  scattered  houses,  with  piles 
of  golden  pumpkins  and  red  apples  under 
the  trees.  And  is  there  any  form  of  piled- 
up  wealth,  bins  of  specie  at  the  bank,  or 
mountains  of  precious  stones,  rubies  and 
sapphires  and  carbuncles,  as  we  picture 
them  in  the  subterranean  treasuries  of 
kings,  that  thrills  the  imagination  with  so 
dream-like  a  sense  of  uncounted  riches,  un- 
told gold,  as  such  natural  bullion  of  the 
earth;  pyramids  of  apples  lighting  up  dark 
orchards,  great  plums  lying  in  heaps  of  care- 
less purple,  corridors  hung  with  fabulous 
bunches  of  grapes,  or  billowy  mounds  of 
yellow  grain — the  treasuries  of  Pomona 
and  Vertumnus?  Such  treasuries,  in  the 
markets  of  this  world,  are  worth  only  a 
modest  so-much-a-bushel,  yet  I  think  I 
should  actually  feel  myself  richer  with  a 
barrel  of  apples  than  with  a  barrel  of  money. 
[81] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

From  a  corn-growing  country,  we  were 
evidently  passing  into  a  country  whose 
beautiful  business  was  apples.  Orchards 
began  more  or  less  to  line  the  road,  and 
wagons  with  those  same  apple-barrels  be- 
came a  feature  of  the  highway. 

Another  of  its  features  was  the  number 
of  old  ruined  farmhouses  we  came  on, 
standing  side  by  side  with  the  new,  more 
ambitious  homesteads.  We  seldom  came 
on  a  prosperous-looking  house  but  a  few 
yards  away  was  to  be  seen  its  aged  and 
abandoned  parent,  smothered  up  with 
bushes,  roof  fallen  in,  timbers  ready  to  col- 
lapse, the  deserted  hearth  choked  with  debris 
and  overgrown  with  weeds — the  very  pic- 
ture of  a  haunted  house.  Here  had  been 
the  original  home,  always  small,  seldom 
more  than  four  rooms,  and  when  things  had 
begun  to  prosper,  a  more  spacious,  and  of- 
ten, to  our  eyes,  a  less  attractive,  structure 

[82] 


APPLE-LAND 

had  been  built,  and  the  old  home  left  to 
the  bats  and  owls,  with  a  complete  aban- 
donment that  seemed  to  us — sentimental 
travellers  as  we  were — as  cynical  as  it  was 
curiously  wasteful. 

Putting  sentiment  out  of  the  question,  we 
had  to  leave  unexplained  why  the  Ameri- 
can farmer  should  thus  allow  so  much  good 
building  material  to  go  to  waste.  Be- 
sides, as  we  also  noted  much  farm  machin- 
ery rusting  unhoused  in  the  grass,  we  won- 
dered why  he  did  not  make  use  of  these  old 
buildings  for  storage  purposes.  But  the 
American  farmer  has  puzzled  wiser  heads 
than  ours,  so  we  gave  it  up  and  turned  our 
attention  once  more  to  our  own  fanciful 
business,  one  highly  useful  branch  of  which 
was  the  observation  of  the  names  on  the  tin 
letter-boxes  thrusting  themselves  out  at  in- 
tervals along  the  road. 
[83] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

The  history  of  American  settlement 
could,  I  suppose,  be  read  in  those  wayside 
letter-boxes,  in  such  names,  for  instance,  as 
"Theo.  Leveque"  and  "Paul  Fugle,"  which, 
like  wind-blown  exotics  from  other  lands, 
we  found  within  a  few  yards  of  each  other. 
One  name,  that  of  "Silvernail,"  we  decided 
could  only  lawfully  belong  to  a  princess  in 
a  fairy  tale.  Such  childishness  as  this,  I 
may  say,  is  of  the  essence  of  a  walking  trip, 
in  which,  from  moment  to  moment,  you  take 
quite  infantile  interest  in  all  manner  of  idle 
observation  and  quite  useless  lore.  That  is 
a  part  of  the  game  you  are  playing,  and  the 
main  thing  is  that  you  are  out  in  the  open 
air,  on  the  open  road,  with  a  simple  heart 
and  a  romantic  appetite. 

Here  is  a  little  picture  of  a  wayfaring  day 
which  I  made  while  Colin  was  sketching  one 
of  those  ruined  farms : 

[84] 


1   ••>?¥     * 

\;\V 

\"    •&  j 


APPLE-LAND 

Apples  along  the  highway  strewn. 
And  morning  opening  all  her  doors; 

The  cawing  rook,  the  distant  train, 
The  valley  with  its  misty  floors; 

The  hillside  hung  with  woods  and  dreams, 
Soft  gleams  of  gossamer  and  dew; 

From  cockcrow  to  the  rising  moon 
The  rainbowed  road  for  me  and  you. 

Along  the  highroad  all  the  day 
The  wagons  filled  with  apples  go, 

And  golden  pumpkins  and  ripe  corn, 
And  all  the  ruddy  overflow 

From  Autumns  apron,  as  she  goes 
About  her  orchards  and  her  fields, 

And  gathers  into  stack  and  barn 
The  treasure  that  the  Summer  yields. 


[85] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

A  singing  heart,  a  laughing  road, 
With  salutations  all  the  way, — 

The  gossip  dog,  the  hidden  bird, 

The  pig  that  grunts  a  gruff  good-day; 

The  apple-ladder  in  the  trees, 
A  friendly  voice  amid  the  boughs, 

The  farmer  driving  home  his  team, 

The  ducks,  the  geese,  the  uddered  cows; 

The  silver  babble  of  the  creek, 

The  willow-whisper — the  day's  end, 

With  murmur  of  the  village  street, 
A  called  good-night,  an  unseen  friend. 


.-•  '•-  • . 


CHAPTER    XII 

ORCHARDS  AND  A  LINE  FROM  VIRGIL 

ORCHARDS!  We  were  walking  to  New 
York — through  orchards.  And  we  might 
have  gone  by  train!  A  country  of  orchards 
and  gold-dust  sunshine  falling  through  the 
quaint  tapestry  trees,  falling  dreamily  on 
heaped-up  gold,  and  the  grave  backs  of  lit- 
tle pigs  joyously  at  large  in  the  apple  twi- 
light. A  drowsy,  murmuring  spell  was  on 
the  land,  the  spell  of  fabled  orchards,  and 
of  old  enchanted  gardens — 

In  the  afternoon  they  came  unto  a  land 
In  which  it  seemed  always  afternoon — 

the  country  of  King  Alcinous.  At  intervals, 

as  we  walked  on  through  the  cider-dreamy 

[87] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

afternoon,  thinking  apples,  smelling  apples, 
munching  apples,  there  came  a  mellow 
sound  like  soft  thunder  through  the  trees.  It 
was  the  thunder  of  apples  being  poured  into 
barrels,  and,  as  in  a  sleep,  the  fragrant  wag- 
ons passed  and  repassed  along  the  road — 
"the  slow-moving  wagons  of  our  lady  of 
Eleusis." 

That  line  of  Virgil  came  to  me,  as  lines 
will  sometimes  come  in  fortunate  moments, 
with  the  satisfaction  of  perfect  fitness  to 
the  hour  and  the  mood,  gathering  into  one 
sacred,  tear-filled  phrase  the  deep  sense  that 
had  been  possessing  me,  as  we  passed  the 
husbandmen  busy  with  the  various  harvest, 
of  the  long  antiquity  of  these  haunted  in- 
dustries of  the  earth. 

So  long,  so  long,  has  man  pursued  these 

ancient  tasks;  so  long  ago  was  he  urging 

the  plowshare  through  the  furrow,  so  long 

ago  the  sower  went  forth  to  sow;  so  long 

[88] 


ORCHARDS  AND  VIRGIL 

ago  have  there  been  barns  and  byres,  gran- 
aries and  threshing-floors,  mills  and  vine- 
yards; so  long  has  there  been  milking 
of  cows,  and  herding  of  sheep  and 
swine.  Can  one  see  a  field  of  wheat  gath- 
ered into  sheaves  without  thinking  of  the 
dream  of  Joseph,  or  be  around  a  farm 
at  lambing  time  without  smiling  to  recall 
the  cunning  of  Jacob?  Already  were  all 
these  things  weary  and  old  and  romantic 
when  Virgil  wrote  and  admonished  the  hus- 
bandman of  times  and  seasons,  of  plows  and 
harrows,  of  mattocks  and  hurdles,  and  the 
mystical  winnowing  fan  of  lacchus. 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

To  the  meditative,  romantic  mind,  the 
farmer  and  plowman,  standing  thus  in 
the  foreground  of  the  infinite  perspective 
of  time,  take  on  a  sacred  significance,  as  of 
traditional  ministers  of  the  ancient  myster- 
ies of  the  earth. 

Perhaps  it  is  one's  involuntary  sense  of 
this  haunted  antiquity  that  gives  its  peculiar 
expressiveness  to  the  solemn,  almost  relig- 
ious quiet  of  barns  and  stables,  the,  so  to 
say,  prehistoric  hush  of  brooding,  sun- 
steeped  rickyards ;  and  gives,  too,  a  homely, 
sacerdotal  look  to  the  implements  and  ves- 
sels of  the  farm.  A  churn  or  a  cheese-press 
gives  one  the  same  deep,  uncanny  thrill  of 
the  terrible  vista  of  time  as  Stonehenge  it- 
self; and  from  such  implements,  too,  there 
seems  to  breathe  a  sigh — a  sigh  of  the  long 
travail  and  unbearable  pathos  of  the  race  of 
men. 

You  will  thus  see  the  satisfaction,  in 
[90] 


ORCHARDS  AND  VIRGIL 

moods  of  such  meditation,  of  carrying  in 
one's  knapsack  a  line  from  Virgil — "the 
slow-moving  wagons  of  our  Lady  of  Eleu- 
sis" — and  I  congratulated  myself  on  my 
forethought  in  having  included  in  our  itin- 
erant library  a  copy  of  Mr.  MackaiPs  beau- 
tiful translation  of  "The  Georgics."  Walt 
Whitman,  talking  to  one  of  his  friends 
about  his  habit  of  carrying  a  book  with  him 
on  his  nature  rambles,  said  that  nine  times 
out  of  ten  he  would  never  open  the  book, 
but  that  the  tenth  time  he  would  need  it 
very  badly.  So  I  needed  "The  Georgics" 
very  badly  that  afternoon,  and  the  hour 
would  have  lost  much  of  its  perfection  had 
I  not  been  able  to  take  the  book  from  my 
knapsack,  and  corroborate  my  mood,  while 
Colin  was  sketching  an  old  barn,  by  reading 
aloud  from  its  consecrated  pages: 

"I  can  repeat  to  ihee  many  a  counsel  of 
them  of  old,  if  thou  shrink  not  back  nor 
[91] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

weary  to  learn  of  lowly  cares.  Above  all 
must  the  threshing-floor  be  levelled  with  the 
ponderous  roller,  and  wrought  by  hand  and 
cemented  with  clinging  potter's  clay,  that  it 
may  not  gather  weeds  nor  crack  in  the  reign 
of  dustt  and  be  playground  withal  for  mani- 
fold destroyers.  Often  the  tiny  mouse 
builds  his  house  and  makes  Ms  granaries  un- 
derground, or  the  eyeless  mole  scoops  his 
cell;  and  in  chinks  is  found  the  toad,  and 
all  the  swarming  vermin  that  are  bred  in 
earth;  and  the  weevil,  and  the  ant  that  fears 
a  destitute  old  age,  plunder  the  great  pile 
of  spelt." 

Perhaps  some  reader  had  been  disposed 
hastily  to  say:  "What  did  you  want  with 
books  out  of  doors?  Was  not  Nature 
enough?"  No  one  who  loves  both  books 
and  Nature  would  ask  that  question,  or  need 
to  have  explained  why  a  knapsack  library 
is  a  necessary  adjunct  of  a  walking-tour. 
[92] 


ORCHARDS  AND  VIRGIL 


For  Nature  and  books  react  so  intimately 
on  each  other,  and,  far  more  than  one  real- 
izes without  thought,  our  enjoyment  of  Na- 
ture is  a  creation  of  literature.  For  example, 
can  any  one  sensitive  to  such  considerations 
deny  that  the  meadows  of  the  world  are 
greener  for  the  Twenty-third  Psalm,  or  the 
starry  sky  the  gainer  in  our  imagination  by 
the  solemn  cadences  of  the  book  of  Job? 
All  our  experiences,  new  and  personal  as 
they  may  seem  to  us,  owe  incalculably  their 
[931 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

depth  and  thrill  to  the  ancestral  sentiment 
in  our  blood,  and  joy  and  sorrow  are  for  us 
what  they  are,  no  little  because  so  many 
old,  far-away  generations  of  men  and 
women  have  joyed  and  sorrowed  in  the 
same  way  before  us.  Literature  but  repre- 
sents that  concentrated  sentiment,  and  satis- 
fies through  expression  our  human  need  for 
some  sympathetic  participation  with  us  in 
our  human  experience. 

That  a  long-dead  poet  walking  in  the 
Spring  was  moved  as  I  am  by  the  unfolding 
leaf  and  the  returning  bird  imparts  an 
added  significance  to  my  own  feelings ;  and 
that  some  wise  and  beautiful  old  book  knew 
and  said  it  all  long  ago,  makes  my  life  seem 
all  the  more  mysteriously  romantic  for  me 
to-day.  Besides,  books  are  not  only  such 
good  companions  for  what  they  say,  but 
for  what  they  are.  As  with  any  other  friend, 
you  may  go  a  whole  day  with  them,  and  not 
[94] 


ORCHARDS  AND  VIRGIL 

have  a  word  to  say  to  each  other,  yet  be 
happily  conscious  of  a  perfect  companion- 
ship. The  book  we  know  and  love — and,  of 
course,  one  would  never  risk  taking  a  book 
we  didn't  know  for  a  companion — has  long 
since  become  a  symbol  for  us,  a  symbol  of 
certain  moods  and  ways  of  feeling,  a  key 
to  certain  kingdoms  of  the  spirit,  of  which 
it  is  often  sufficient  just  to  hold  the  key 
in  our  hands.  So,  a  single  flower  in  the 
hand  is  a  key  to  Summer,  a  floating  per- 
fume the  key  to  the  hidden  gardens  of  re- 
membrance. The  wrong  book  in  the  hand, 
whether  opened  or  not,  is  as  distracting  a 
presence  as  an  irrelevant  person;  and  there- 
fore it  was  with  great  care  that  I  chose  my 
knapsack  library.  It  consisted  of  these  nine 
books : 

MackaiPs  "Georgics." 
Hans  Andersen's  Fairy  Tales. 
Shakespeare's  Sonnets. 
[95] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

Locke's  "Beloved  Vagabond." 

Selections  from  R.  L.  S. 

Pater's  "Marius  the  Epicurean." 

Alfred  de  Musset's  "Premieres  Poesies." 

Baedeker's  "United  States." 

Road  Map  of  New  York  State. 

And,  though  my  knapsack  already 
weighed  eighteen  pounds,  I  could  not  resist 
the  call  of  a  cheap  edition  of  Wordsworth 
in  a  drug-store  at  Warsaw,  a  charming  little 
town  embosomed  among  hills  and  orchards, 
where  we  arrived,  dreamy  with  country  air, 
at  the  end  of  the  day. 


[96J 


CHAPTER  XIII 

FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

WITH  the  morn  our  way  still  lay  among 
apples  and  honey,  hives  and  orchards;  a 
land  of  prosperous  farms,  sumptuous  roll- 
ing downs,  rich  woodland,  sheep,  more  pigs, 
more  apple-barrels  and  velvety  sunshine. 
The  old  ruined  houses  had  ceased,  and  the 
country  had  taken  on  a  more  generous, 
broad-shouldered,  deep-bosomed  aspect. 
Nature  was  preparing  for  one  of  her  big 
Promised  Land  effects.  We  were  coming 
to  the  valley  of  the  Genesee  River.  We 
made  a  comparison  of  two  kinds  of  pros- 
perity in  the  look  of  a  landscape.  Some 
villages  and  farms  suggest  smugness  in  their 
prosperity.  They  have  a  model-farm,  busi- 
[97] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

ness-like,  well-regulated,  up-to-date,  com- 
pany-financed air,  suggesting  such  modern 
agricultural  terms  as  "ensilage,"  "irriga- 
tion" and  "fertilizer."  Other  villages  and 
farms,  while  just  as  well-kept  and  well-to- 
do,  have,  so  to  say,  a  something  romantic 
about  their  prosperity,  a  bounteous,  ruddy, 
golden-age  look  about  them,  as  though  Na- 
ture herself  had  been  the  farmer  and  they 
had  ruddied  and  ripened  out  of  her  own 
unconscious  abundance — the  difference  be- 
tween a  row  of  modern  box  beehives  and 
the  old  thatched-cottage  kind.  The  coun- 
tryside of  the  Genesee  valley  has  the  roman- 
tic prosperous  look.  Its  farms  and  villages 
look  like  farms  and  villages  in  picture- 
books,  and  the  country  folk  we  met  seemed 
happy  and  gay  and  kind,  sucK  as  those  one 
reads  of  in  William  Morris's  romances  of 
the  golden  age.  As  from  time  to  time  we 
exchanged  greetings  with  them,  we  were 
[98] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

struck  with  their  comely  health  and  blithe 
ways — particularly  with  their  fine  teeth,  as 
they  laughed  us  the  time  of  day,  or  stopped 
their  wagons  to  gossip  a  moment  with  the 
two  outlandish  packmen — the  very  teeth  one 
would  expect  in  an  apple-country.  Per- 
haps they  came  of  so  much  sweet  commerce 
with  apples ! 

The  possessor  of  a  particularly  fine  dis- 
play hailed  us  as  he  drove  by  in  an  empty 
wagon,  at  the  tail  of  which  trailed  a  long 
orchard  ladder,  and  asked  us  if  we  would 
care  for  a  lift.  Now  it  happened  that  his 
suggestion  came  like  a  voice  from  heaven 
for  poor  Colin,  one  of  whose  shoes  had 
been  casting  a  gloom  over  our  spirits  for 
several  miles.  So  we  accepted  with  alacrity, 
and,  really,  riding  felt  quite  good  for  a 
change!  Our  benefactor  was  a  bronzed, 
handsome  young  fellow,  just  through  Cor- 
nell, he  told  us,  and  proud  of  his  brave  col- 
[99] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

lege,  as  all  Cornell  men  are.  He  had  chosen 
apple-farming  for  his  career,  and,  naturally, 
seemed  quite  happy  about  it;  lived  on  his 
farm  near  by  with  his  mother  and  sister, 
and  was  at  the  moment  out  on  the  quest  of 
four  apple-packers  for  his  harvesting,  these 
experts  being  at  a  premium  at  this  season. 
We  rattled  along  gaily  in  the  broad  after- 
noon sunshine,  exchanging  various  human 
information,  from  apple-packing  to  New 
York  theatres,  after  the  manner  of  the  com- 
panionable soul  of  man,  and  I  hope  he  liked 
us  as  well  as  we  liked  him. 

One  piece  of  information  was  of  particu- 
lar interest  to  Colin,  the  whereabouts  of  one 
"Billy  the  Cobbler,"  a  character  of  the 
neighbourhood,  who  would  fix  Colin's  shoe 
for  him,  and,  incidentally,  if  he  was  in  the 
mood,  give  us  a  musical  and  dramatic  en- 
tertainment into  the  bargain. 

At  length  our  ways  parted,  and,  with 
[100] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

cheery  good-byes  and  good  wishes,  our 
young  friend  went  rattling  along,  leaving  in 
our  hearts  a  warm  feeling  of  the  brother- 
hood of  man — sometimes.  He  had  let  us 
down  close  by  the  "High  Banks,"  the  ru- 
mour of  which  had  been  in  our  ears  for  some 
miles,  and  presently  the  great  effect  Nature 
had  been  preparing  burst  on  our  gaze  with 
a  startling  surprise.  The  peaceful  pastoral 
country  was  suddenly  cloven  in  twain  by  a 
gigantic  chasm,  the  Genesee  River,  dizzy 
depths  below,  picturesquely  flowing  between 
Grand  Canon  rock  effects,  shaggy  woods 
clothing  the  precipitous  limestone,  and 
small  forests  growing  far  down  in  the  broad 
bed  of  the  river,  with  here  and  there  checker- 
board spaces  of  cultivated  land,  gleaming, 
smooth  and  green,  amid  all  the  spectacular 
savageness — soft,  cozy  spots  of  verdure  nes- 
tling dreamily  in  the  hollow  of  the  giant 
rocky  hand.  The  road  ran  close  to  the  edge 
[101] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

of  the  chasm,  and  the  sublimity  was  with 
us,  laying  its  hush  upon  us,  for  the  rest  of 
the  afternoon.  Appropriate  to  her  Jove- 
like  mood,  Nature  had  planted  stern  thick- 
ets of  oak-trees  along  the  rocky  edge,  and 
"the  acorns  of  our  lord  of  Chaonia" 
crunched  beneath  our  feet  as  we  walked  on. 
After  a  while,  sure  enough  we  came  upon 
"Billy  the  Cobbler,"  seated  at  his  bench  in 
a  little  shop  at  the  beginning  of  a  straggle 
of  houses,  alone,  save  for  his  cat,  at  the 
sleepy  end  of  afternoon.  We  had  under- 
stood that  he  had  been  crippled  in  some 
cruel  accident  of  machinery,  and  was  ham- 
pered in  the  use  of  his  legs.  But,  unless  in 
a  certain  philosophic  sweetness  on  his  big, 
happy  face,  there  was  no  sign  of  the  cripple 
about  his  burly,  broad-shouldered  personal- 
ity. He  was  evidently  meant  to  be  a  giant, 
and  was  what  one  might  call  the  bo'sun  type, 
bluff,  big-voiced  and  merry,  with  a  boyish 
[102] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

laugh,  large,  twinkling  eyes,  a  trifle  wistful, 
and  the  fine  teeth  of  the  district. 

"Well,  boys,"  said  he,  looking  up  from 
his  work  with  a  smile,  "and  what  can  I  do 
for  you?  Walking,  eh? — to  New  York!" 
and  he  whistled,  as  every  one  did  when  l&ey 
learned  our  mysterious  business. 

Then,  taking  Colin's  shoe  in  his  hand,  he 
commenced  to  pound  upon  that  instrument 
of  torture,  talking  gaily  the  while.  Pres- 
ently he  asked,  "Do  you  care  about  music?" 
and  on  our  eagerly  agreeing  that  we  did, 
"All  right,"  he  said,  "we'll  close  the  shop 
for  a  few  minutes  and  have  some." 

Then,  moving  around  on  his  seat,  like 
some  heroic  half -figure  bust  on  its  pedestal, 
he  rummaged  among  the  litter  of  leather 
and  tools  at  his  side,  and  produced  a  guitar 
from  its  baize  bag,  also  a  mouth  organ, 
which  by  some  ingenious  wire  arrangement 
he  fastened  around  his  neck,  so  that  he 
[103] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

might  press  his  lips  upon  it,  leaving  his 
hands  free  for  the  guitar. 

Then,  "Ready?"  said  he,  and,  applying 
himself  simultaneously  to  the  guitar  and  the 
harmonica,  off  he  started  with  a  quite  elec- 
trical gusto  into  a  spirited  fandango  that 
made  the  little  shop  dance  and  rattle  with 
merriment.  You  would  have  said  that  a 
whole  orchestra  was  there,  such  a  volume 
and  variety  of  musical  sound  did  Billy  con- 
trive to  evoke  from  his  two  instruments. 

"There!"  he  said,  with  a  humorous 
chuckle,  pushing  the  harmonica  aside  from 
his  mouth,  "what  do  you  think  of  that  for 
an  overture?"  He  had  completely  hypno- 
tized us  with  his  infectious  high  spirits,  and 
we  were  able  to  applaud  him  sincerely,  for 
this  lonely  cobbler  of  shoes  was  evidently  a 
natural  well  of  music,  and  was,  besides,  no 
little  of  an  executant. 

'Now  I'll  give  you  an  imitation  of  grand 
[104] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

opera,"  he  said;  and  then  he  launched  into 
the  drollest  burlesque  of  a  fashionable  tenor 
and  a  prima-donna,  as  clever  as  could  be. 
He  was  evidently  a  born  mime  as  well  as  a 
musician,  and  presently  delighted  us  with 
some  farmyard  imitations,  and  one  particu- 
larly quaint  impersonation,  "an  old  lady 
singing  with  false  teeth,"  sent  us  into  fits  of 
laughter. 

"You  ought  to  go  into  vaudeville,"  we 
both  said  spontaneously,  with  that  vicious 
modern  instinct  to  put  private  gifts  to  pro- 
fessional uses,  and  then  Billy,  with  shy 
pride,  admitted  that  he  did  do  a  little  now 
and  again  in  a  professional  way  at  harvest 
balls  (we  thought  of  Sheldon  Center)  and 
the  like. 

"Perhaps  you  might  like  one  of  my  pro- 
fessional letter-heads,"  he  said,  handing  us 
one  apiece.  I  think  probably  the  reader 
would  like  one,  too.  You  must  imagine  it 
[105] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

in  the  original,  with  fancy  displayed  profes- 
sional type,  regular  "artiste"  style,  and  a 
portrait  of  Billy,  with  his  two  instruments, 
in  one  corner.  And  "see  thou  mock  him 
not,"  gentle  reader! 

King  of  Them  All 

BILLY  WILLIAMS 

THE  KING  OF  ALL  IMITATORS 

Producing  in  Rapid  Succession 

A  GRAND  REPERTOIRE 

of  Imitations  and  Impersonations 

Consisting  of: 

Minstrel  Bands,  Circus  Bands,  Killing 
Pigs,  Cat  Greeting  Her  Kitten,  Barn- 
Yard  of  Hens  and  Roosters,  Opera 
Singers  with  Guitar,  Whistling  with 
Guitar,  Old  Lady  Singing  with  False 
Teeth,  Cow  and  Calf,  Harmonica  with 
the  Guitar,  Arab  Song,  Trombone  Solo 
with  the  Guitar. 

[106] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

Yes!  "See  thou  mock  him  not,"  gentle 
reader,  for  Billy  is  no  subject  for  any  man's 
condescension.  We  were  in  his  company 
scarcely  an  hour,  but  we  went  away  with  a 
great  feeling  of  respect  and  tenderness  for 
him,  and  we  hope  some  day  to  drop  in  on 
him  again,  and  hear  his  music  and  his  quaint, 
manly  wisdom. 

"All  alone  in  the  world,  Billy?" 

A  shade  of  sadness  passed  over  his  face, 
and  was  gone  again,  as  he  smilingly  an- 
swered, stroking  the  cat  that  purred  and 
rubbed  herself  against  his  shoulder. 

"Just  puss  and  me  and  the  guitar,"  he 
said.  "The  happiest  of  families.  Ah!  Mu- 
sic's a  great  thing  of  a  lonely  evening." 

And  a  sense  of  the  brave  loneliness  of 
Billy's  days  swept  over  me  as  we  shook  his 
strong  hand,  and  he  gave  us  a  cheery  god- 
speed on  our  way.  I  am  convinced  that 
Billy  could  earn  quite  a  salary  on  the  vaude- 
[107] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

ville  stage ;  but — no !  he  is  better  where  he  is, 
sitting  there  at  his  bench,  with  his  black  cat 
and  his  guitar  and  his  singing,  manly  soul. 

The  twilight  was  rapidly  thickening  as  we 
left  Billy,  once  more  bent  over  his  work, 
and,  the  fear  of  "supper-time"  in  our  hearts, 
we  pushed  on  at  extra  speed  toward  our 
night's  lodging  at  Mount  Morris.  The  oak- 
trees  gloomed  denser  on  our  right  as  we 
plowed  along  a  villainously  sandy  road.  La- 
bourers homing  from  the  day's  work  greet- 
ed us  now  and  again  in  the  dimness,  and 
presently  one  of  these,  plodding  up  behind 
us,  broke  forth  into  conversation : 

"Ben-a  carry  pack-a  lik-a  dat-a — forty- 
two  months — army — ol-a  country,"  said  the 
voice  out  of  the  darkness. 

It  was  an  Italian  labourer  on  his  way  to 
supper,  interested  in  our  knapsacks. 

"You're  an  Italian?" 

"Me  come  from  Pal-aer-mo." 
[108] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

The  little  chap  was  evidently  in  a  talka- 
tive mood,  and  I  nudged  Colin  to  do  the 
honours  of  the  conversation. 

"Pal-aer-mo?  Indeed!"  said  Colin. 
"Fine  city,  I  guess." 

"Been-a  Pal-aer-mo?"  asked  the  Italian 
eagerly.  Colin  couldn't  say  that  he  had. 

"Great  city,  Pal-aer-mo,"  continued  our 
friend,  "great  theatre — cost  sixteen  million 
dollars." 

There  is  nothing  like  a  walking-trip  for 
gathering  information  of  this  kind. 

The  Italian  went  on  to  explain  that  this 
country  was  a  poor  substitute  for  the  "ol-a 
country." 

"This  country — rough  country.  In  this 
country  me  do  rough-a  work,"  he  explained 
apologetically;  "in  Pal-aer-mo  do  polit-a 
work." 

And  he  accentuated  his  statement  by  a 
vicious  side  spit  upon  the  American  soil. 

[109] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

It  transpired  that  the  "polit-a  work"  on 
which  he  had  been  engaged  in  Pal-aer-mo 
had  been  waiting  in  a  restaurant. 

And  so  the  poor  soul  chattered  on, 
touching,  not  unintelligently,  in  his  absurd 
English,  on  American  politics,  capital  and 
labour,  the  rich  and  the  poor.  The  hard  lot 
of  the  poor  man  in  America,  and — "Pal-aer- 
mo,"  made  the  recurring  burden  of  his  talk, 
through  which,  a  pathetic  undertone,  came 
to  us  a  sense  of  the  native  poetry  of  his 
race. 

Did  he  ever  expect  to  return  to  Palermo? 
we  asked  him  as  we  parted.  "Ah!  many  a 
night  me  dream  of  Pal-aer-mo,"  he  called 
back,  as,  striking  into  a  by-path,  he  disap- 
peared in  the  darkness. 

And  then  we  came  to  a  great  iron  bridge, 

sternly  silhouetted  in  the  sunset.    On  either 

side  rose  cliffs  of  darkness,  and  beneath,  like 

sheets  of  cold  moonlight,  flowed  the  Gene- 

[110] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

see,  a  Dantesque  effect  of  jet  and  silver, 
Stygian  in  its  intensity  and  indescribably 
mournful.  The  banks  of  Acheron  can  not 
be  more  wildly  funebre,  and  it  was  compan- 
ionable to  hear  Colin's  voice  mimicking  out 
of  the  darkness : 

"In  this  country  me  do  rough- a  work.  In 
Pal-aer-mo  do  polit-a  work!" 

"Poor  chap !"  I  said,  after  a  pause,  think- 
ing of  our  friend  from  Pal-aer-mo.  "Do 
you  know  Hafiz,  Colin?"  I  continued. 
"There  is  an  ode  of  his  that  came  back  to 
me  as  our  poor  Italian  was  talking.  I  think 
I  will  say  it  to  you.  It  is  just  the  time  and 
place  for  it." 

"Do,"  said  Colin.    And  then  I  repeated: 

"At  sunset,  when  the  eyes  of  exiles  fill, 
And  distance  makes  a  desert  of  the  heart, 

And  all  the  lonely  world  grows  lonelier  still, 
I  with  the  other  exiles  go  apart, 
[111] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

And  offer  up  the  stranger's  evening  prayer. 

My  body  shakes  with  weeping  as  I  pray, 
Thinking  on  all  I  love  that  are  not  there, 

So  desolately  absent  far  away — 
My  Love  and  Friend,  and  my  own  land 
and  home. 

O  aching  emptiness  of  evening  skies! 
O  foolish  heart,  what  tempted  thee  to  roam 

So  far  away  from  the  Beloved's  eyes! 
To  the  Beloved's  country  I  belong — 

/  am  a  stranger  in  this  foreign  place; 
Strange  are  its  streets,  and  strange  to  me 
its  tongue; 

Strange   to   the  stranger   each  familiar 

face. 
'Tis  not  my  city!    Take  me  by  the  hand, 

Divine  protector  of  the  lonely  ones, 
And  lead  me  back  to  the  Beloved's  land — 

Back  to  my  friends  and  my  companions. 

[112] 


FELLOW  WAYFARERS 

O  wind  that  blows  from  Shiraz,  bring  to 

me 

A  little  dust  from  my  Beloved's  street; 
Send  Hafiz  something,  love,   that  comes 

from  thee, 

Touched  by  thy  hand,  or  trodden  by  thy 
feet/' 

"My!  but  that  makes  one  feel  lonesome," 
was  Colin's  comment.  "I  wonder  if  there 
will  be  any  mail  from  the  folk  at  Mount 
Morris." 


[113] 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  OLD  LADY  OF  THE  WALNUTS  AND  OTHERS 

WHAT  manner  of  men  we  were  and  what 
our  business  was,  thus  wandering  along  the 
highroads  with  packs  on  our  backs  and  stout 
sticks  in  our  hands,  was  matter  for  no  little 
speculation,  and  even  suspicion,  to  the  rural 
mind.  We  did  not  seem  to  fit  in  with  any 
familiar  classification  of  vagabond.  We 
might  be  peddlers,  or  we  might  be  "hoboes," 
but  there  was  a  disquieting  uncertainty 
about  us,  and  we  felt  it  necessary  occasion- 
ally to  make  reassuring  explanations.  Once 
or  twice  we  found  no  opportunity  to  do  this, 
as,  for  instance,  one  sinister,  darksome  even- 
ing, we  stood  in  hesitation  at  a  puzzling 
cross-road — near  Dansville,  I  think — and 
[114] 


I      *  • 

r 


Mmf 


THE  OLD  LADY 

awaited  the  coming  of  an  approaching  bug- 
gy from  which  to  ask  the  way.  It  was 
driven  by  two  ladies,  who,  on  our  making 
a  signal  of  distress  to  them,  immediately 
whipped  up  with  evident  alarm,  and  disap- 
peared in  a  flash.  Dear  things!  they  evi- 
dently anticipated  a  hold-up,  and  no  doubt 
arrived  home  with  a  breathless  tale  of  two 
suspicious-looking  characters  hanging  about 
the  neighbourhood. 

On  another  occasion,  we  had  been  seated 
awhile  under  a  walnut  tree  growing  near  a 
farm,  and  scattering  its  fruitage  half  across 
the  highroad.  Colin  had  been  anointing  his 
suffering  foot,  and,  as  I  told  him,  looked 
strongly  reminiscent  of  a  certain  famous 
corn-cure  advertisement.  Meanwhile,  I  had 
been  once  more  quoting  Virgil:  "The  wal- 
nut in  the  woodland  attires  herself  in  wealth 
of  blossom  and  bends  with  scented  boughs," 

when  there  approached  with  slow  step  an 
[115] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

old,  white-haired  lady,  at  once  gentle  and 
severe  in  appearance,  accompanied  by  a 
younger  lady.  When  they  had  arrived  in 
front  of  us,  the  old  lady  in  measured  tones 
of  sorrow  rather  than  anger,  said:  "We 
rather  needed  those  walnuts —  Dear 
soul !  she  evidently  thought  that  we  had  been 
filling  our  knapsacks  with  her  nuts,  and  it 
took  some  little  astonished  expostulation  on 
our  part  to  convince  her  that  we  hadn't. 
This  affront  seemed  to  sink  no  little  into 
Colin's  sensitive  Latin  soul — and  they  were 
public  enough  walnuts,  anyway,  scattered, 
as  they  were,  across  the  public  road!  But 
Colin  couldn't  get  over  it  for  some  time,  and 
I  suspected  that  he  was  the  more  sensitive 
from  his  recently — owing,  doubtless,  to  his 
distinguished  Gallic  appearance — having 
been  profanely  greeted  by  some  irreverent 
boys  with  the  word  "Spaghetti!"  However, 
there  was  balm  for  our  wounded  feelings  a 
[116] 


THE  OLD  LADY 

little  farther  along  the  road,  when  a  com- 
panionable old  farmer  greeted  us  with: 

"Well,  boys!  out  for  a  walk?  It's  easy 
seeing  you're  no  tramps." 

Colin's  expression  was  a  study  in  grati- 
tude. The  farmer  was  a  fine,  soldierly  old 
fellow,  who  told  me  that  he  was  half  Eng- 
lish, too,  on  his  father's  side. 

"But  my  mother,"  he  added,  "was  a  good 
blue-bellied  Yankee." 

We  lured  him  on  to  using  that  delight- 
fully quaint  expression  again  before  we  left 
him;  and  we  also  learned  from  him  valuable 
information  as  to  the  possibilities  of  lunch 
farther  along  the  road,  for  we  were  in  a 
lonely  district  with  no  inns,  and  it  was  Sun- 
day. 

In  regard  to  lunch,  I  suppose  that  in 
prosaically  paying  our  way  for  bed  and 
board  as  we  fared  along  we  fell  short  of  the 
Arcadian  theory  of  walking-tours  in  which 

r  117 1 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

the  wayfarer,  like  a  mendicant  friar,  takes 
toll  of  lunch  and  dinner  from  the  hospitable 
farmer  of  sentimental  legend,  and  sleeps  for 
choice  in  barns,  hayricks  or  hedgesides. 
Now,  sleeping  out  of  doors  in  October,  if 
you  have  ever  tried  it,  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  sleeping  out  of  doors  in  June, 
and  as  for  rural  hospitality — well,  if  you 
are  of  a  sensitive  constitution  you  shrink 
from  obtruding  yourself,  an  alien  appari- 
tion, upon  the  embarrassed  and  embarrass- 
ing rural  domesticities.  Besides,  to  be  quite 
honest,  rural  table-talk,  except  in  Mr. 
Hardy's  novels  or  pastoral  poetry,  is, 
to  say  the  least,  lacking  in  variety.  Indeed, 
if  the  truth  must  be  told,  the  conversation  of 
country  people,  generally  speaking,  and  an 
occasional,  very  occasional,  character  or 
oddity  apart,  is  undeniably  dull,  and  I  hope 
it  will  not  be  imputed  to  me  for  hardness  of 
heart  that,  after  some  long-winded  colloquy 
[118] 


THE  OLD  LADY 

or  endless  reminiscence,  sententious  and 
trivial,  I  have  thought  that  Gray's  famous 
line  should  really  have  been  written — "the 
long  and  tedious  annals  of  the  poor." 

But  my  heart  smites  me  with  ingratitude 
toward  some  kindly  memories  as  I  write 
that — memories  of  homely  welcome,  simple 
and  touching  and  dignified.  Surely  I  am 
not  writing  so  of  the  genial  farmer  on  whom 
we  came  one  lunch  hour  as  he  was  stripping 
corn  in  his  yard. 

"Missus,"  he  called  to  the  house  a  few 
yards  away,  "can  you  find  any  lunch  for 
two  good-looking  fellows  here?" 

The  housewife  came  to  the  door,  scanned 
us  for  a  second,  and  replied  in  the  affirma- 
tive. As  we  sat  down  to  table,  our  host 
bowed  his  head  and  said  a  simple  grace  for 
the  bacon  and  cabbage,  pumpkin-pie,  cheese 
and  tea  we  were  about  to  receive;  and  the 
unexpected  old-fashioned  rite,  too  seldom 
T119] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

encountered  nowadays,  came  on  me  with  a 
fresh  beauty  and  impressiveness,  which 
made  me  feel  that  its  discontinuance  is  a 
real  loss  of  gracious  ritual  in  our  lives,  and 
perhaps  even  more.  Thus  this  simple  farm- 
er's board  seemed  sensitively  linked  with  the 
far-away  beginnings  of  time.  Of  all  our  re- 
ligious symbolism,  the  country  gods  and  the 
gods  of  the  hearth  and  the  household  seem 
actual,  approachable  presences,  and  the  say- 
ing of  grace  before  meat  was  a  beautiful, 
fitting  reminder  of  that  mysterious,  invisible 
care  and  sustenance  of  our  lives,  which  no 
longer  find  any  recognition  in  our  daily 
routine:  Above  all,  worship  ihou  the  gods, 
and  bring  great  Ceres  her  yearly  offerings. 
Another  such  wayside  meal  and  another 
old  couple  live  touchingly  in  our  memories. 
We  were  still  in  the  broad,  sun-swept  val- 
ley of  the  Genesee,  our  road  lying  along 
the  edge  of  the  wide,  reed-grown  flats  and 
[120] 


THE  OLD  LADY 

water-meadows,  bounded  on  the  north  by 
rolling  hills.  On  our  left  hand,  parallel 
with  the  road,  ran  a  sort  of  willowed  moat 
banked  by  a  grass-grown  causeway,  a  con- 
tinuous narrow  mound,  somewhat  higher 
than  the  surrounding  country,  and  cut 
through  here  and  there  with  grass-grown 
gullies,  the  whole  suggesting  primeval 
earthworks  and  excavations.  So  the  old 
Roman  roads  run,  grassy  and  haunted  and 
choked  with  underbrush,  in  the  lonelier 
country  districts  of  England.  We  were 
curious  as  to  the  meaning  of  this  causeway, 
and  learned  at  length  that  here  was  all  that 
remained  of  the  old  Genesee  Canal.  Thirty 
years  ago,  this  moat  had  brimmed  with 
water,  and  barges  had  plied  their  sleepy 
traffic  between  Dansville  and  Rochester. 
But  the  old  order  had  changed,  and  a  day 
had  come  when  the  dike  had  been  cut 
through,  the  lazy  water  let  out  into  the  sur- 
[1211 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

rounding  flats,  and  the  old  waterway  left 
to  the  willows  and  the  wild-flowers,  the  mink 
and  the  musk-rat.  Only  thirty  years  ago — 
yet  to-day  Nature  has  so  completely  taken 
it  all  back  to  herself  that  the  hush  of  a  long- 
vanished  antiquity  is  upon  it,  and  the  turfy 
burial  mound  of  some  Hengist  and  Horsa 
could  not  be  more  silent. 

This  old  fosse  seemed  to  strike  the  some- 
what forgotten,  out-of-the-world  note  of  the 
surrounding  country.  Picturesque  to  the 
eye,  with  bounteous  green  prospects  and 
smooth,  smiling  hills,  it  was  not,  we  were 
told,  as  prosperous  as  it  looked.  For  some 
vague  reason,  the  tides  of  agricultural  pros- 
perity had  ebbed  from  that  spacious  sunlit 
vale.  A  handsome  old  trapper,  who  sat  at 
his  house  door  smoking  his  pipe  and  looking 
across  the  green  flats,  set  down  the  cause  to 
the  passing  of  the  canal.  Ah,  yes!  it  was 
possible  for  him,  thirty  years  ago,  to  make 
[122] 


THE  OLD  LADY 

the  trip  to  Rochester  and  back  by  the  canal, 
and  bring  home  a  good  ten  dollars ;  but  now 
— well,  every  one  in  the  valley  was  poor,  ex- 
cept the  man  whose  beehives  we  had  seen 
on  the  hillside  half-a-mile  back.  He  had 
made  no  less  than  a  thousand  dollars  out  of 
his  honey  this  last  season.  He  was  an  old 
bachelor,  too,  like  himself.  There  were  no 
less  than  five  bachelors  in  the  valley — five 
old  men  without  a  woman  to  look  after 
them. 

" — or  bother  them,"  the  old  chap  added 
humorously,  relighting  his  pipe.  Mrs.  Mul- 
ligan, half  a  mile  farther  up  the  valley,  was 
the  only  woman  thereabouts;  and  she,  by 
the  way,  would  give  us  some  lunch.  We 
could  say  that  he  had  sent  us. 

So  we  left  the  old  trapper  to  his  pipe  and 

his  memories,  and  went  in  search  of  Mrs. 

Mulligan.     Presently  a  poor  little  house 

high  up  on  the  hillside  caught  our  eye,  and 

[123] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

we  made  toward  it.  As  we  were  Hearing 
the  door,  a  dog,  evidently  not  liking  our 
packs,  sprang  out  at  us,  and  from  down  be- 
low in  the  marshy  flats  floated  the  voice  of 
a  man  calling  to  us. 

"Get  out  o'  that!"  hailed  the  yoice. 
"There's  nothing  there  for  you." 

Poor  Colin!  We  were  evidently  taken 
for  tramps  once  more. 

However,  undaunted  by  this  reception, 
we  reached  the  cottage  door,  and  at  our 
knock  appeared  a  very  old,  but  evidently 
vigorous,  woman. 

"Is  this  Mrs.  Mulligan's  house?" 

Her  name  on  the  lips  of  two  strangers 
brought  a  surprised  smile  to  her  face — a 
pleasant  feeling  of  importance,  even  notor- 
iety, no  doubt — and  she  speedily  made  us 
welcome,  and,  with  many  apologies,  set  be- 
fore us  the  cold  remains  of  lunch  which  had 
been  over  an  hour  or  two  ago — cold  squash, 
[124] 


THE  OLD  LADY 

pumpkin  pie,  cheese  and  milk.  It  was  too 
bad  we  were  late,  for  they  had  had  a 
chicken  for  dinner,  and  had  sent  the  re- 
mains of  it  to  a  friend  down  the  road, — 
our  trapper,  no  doubt, — and  if  the  fire 
hadn't  gone  out  she  would  have  made  us 
some  tea.  Now,  cold  squash  is  not  exactly 
an  inflammatory  diet,  but  we  liked  the  old 
lady  so  much,  she  had  such  a  pleasant, 
motherly  way  with  her,  and  such  an  enter- 
taining, wise  and  even  witty  tongue,  that 
we  decided  that  cold  squash,  with  her  as 
hostess,  was  better  than  a  stalled  ox  and 
hatred  therewith. 

Presently  the  door  opened  and  the  good 
man  entered,  he  who  had  called  to  us  from 
the  marsh — a  tall,  emaciated  old  man,  pite- 
ously  thin,  and  old,  and  work- weary  to  look 
on,  but  with  a  keen,  bright  eye  in  his  head, 
and  something  of  a  proud  air  about  his  an- 
cient figure.  It  seemed  cruel  to  think  of  his 
[1251 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

old  bones  having  still  to  go  on  working,  but 
our  two  old  people,  who  seemed  pathetically 
fond  of  each  other,  were  evidently  very 
poor,  like  the  rest  of  the  valley.  The  old 
man  excused  himself  for  his  salutation  of 
us — but  there  were  so  many  dangerous  char- 
acters about,  and  the  old  folk  shook  their 
heads  and  told  of  the  daring  operations  of 
mysterious  robbers  in  the  neighbourhood. 
In  their  estimation,  the  times  were  generally 
unsafe,  and  lawless  characters  rife  in  the 
land.  We  looked  around  at  the  pathetic 
poverty  of  the  place — and  wondered  why 
they  should  disquiet  themselves.  Poor 
souls!  there  was  little  left  to  rob  them  of, 
save  the  fluttering  remnants  of  their  mortal 
breath.  But,  poor  as  they  were,  they  had 
their  telephone, — a  fact  that  struck  us  para- 
doxically in  many  a  poor  cabin  as  we  went 
along.  lYes!  had  they  a  mind,  they  could 
[126] 


THE  OLD  LADY 

call  up  the  White  House,  that  instant,  or 
the  Waldorf -Astoria. 

We  spoke  of  our  old  trapper,  and  the  old 
lady  smiled. 

"Those  are  his  socks  I've  been  darning 
for  him,"  she  said.  So  the  cynical  old 
bachelor  was  taken  care  of  by  the  good 
angel,  woman,  after  all! 

Trapping  was  about  all  there  was  to  do 
now  in  the  valley,  she  said.  A  mink  brought 
seven  dollars,  a  musk-rat  thirty  cents.  Our 
old  bachelor  had  made  as  much  as  eighteen 
dollars  in  two  days — one  day  several  years 
ago.  The  old  man  had  told  us  this  himself. 
It  was  evidently  quite  a  piece  of  history  in 
the  valley,  quite  a  local  legend. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  MAN  AT  DANSVILLE 

AT  Dansville  we  fell  in  with  a  man  after 
our  own  hearts.  Fortunately  for  himself 
and  his  friends,  he  is  unaware  of  the  simple 
fact  that  he  is  a  poet.  We  didn't  tell  him, 
either — though  we  longed  to.  He  was 
standing  outside  his  prosperous-looking 
planing-mill,  at  about  half-past  eight  of  a 
dreaming  October  morning.  Inside,  the 
saws  were  making  that  droning,  sweet- 
smelling,  sawdust  noise  that  made  Colin 
think  of  "Adam  Bede."  The  willows  and 
button-wood  trees  at  the  back  of  the  work- 
shops were  still  smoking  with  sunlit  mist, 
and  the  quiet,  massive,  pretty  water  looked 
like  a  sleepy  mirror,  as  it  softly  flooded 
[128] 


THE  MAN  AT  DANSVILLE 

along  to   its   work   on   the  big,   dripping 
wheels. 

To  our  left  a  great  hill,  all  huge  and 
damp,  glittering  with  gossamers,  and  smell- 
ing of  restless  yellow  leaves,  shouldered  the 
morning  sky. 

Then,  turning  away  from  talk  with  three 
or  four  workmen,  standing  at  his  office  door, 
he  saluted  the  two  apparitional  figures,  so 
oddly  passing  along  the  muddy  morning 
road. 

"Out  for  a  walk,  boys?"  he  called. 

He  was  a  handsome  man  of  about  forty- 
three,  with  a  romantic  scar  slashed  down 
his  left  cheek,  a  startling  scar  that  must  have 
meant  hideous  agony  to  him,  and  yet,  here 
in  the  end,  had  made  his  face  beautiful,  by 
the  presence  in  it  of  a  spiritual  conquest. 

"How  far  are  you  walking? — you  are  not 
going  so  far  as  my  little  river  here,  I'll 

bet " 

[129] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

And  then  we  understood  that  we  were 
in  the  presence  of  romantic  conversation, 
and  we  listened  with  a  great  gladness. 

"Yes!  who  would  think  that  this  little, 
quiet,  mill-race  is  on  her  way  to  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico!" 

We  looked  at  the  little  reeded  river,  so 
demure  in  her  morning  mists,  so  discreet 
and  hushed  among  her  willows,  and  in  our 
friend's  eyes,  and  by  the  magic  of  his  fanci- 
ful tongue,  we  saw  her  tripping  along  to 
dangerous  conjunctions  with  resounding 
rock-bedded  streams,  adventurously  taking 
hands  with  swirling,  impulsive  floods,  fra- 
grant with  water-flowers  and  laden  with  old 
forests,  and  at  length,  through  the  strange, 
starlit  hills,  sweeping  out  into  some  moon- 
lit estuary  of  the  all-enfolding  sea. 

"Aren't  you  glad  we  walked,  Colin?"  I 
said,  a  mile  or  two  after.  "You  are,  of 
course,  a  great  artist ;  but  I  don't  remember 
[130] 


THE  MAN  AT  DANSVILLE 

you  ever  having  a  thought  quite  so  fine  and 
romantic  as  that,  do  you?" 

"How  strange  it  must  be,"  said  Colin, 
after  a  while,  "to  have  beauty — beautiful 
thoughts,  beautiful  pictures — merely  as  a 
recreation;  not  as  one's  business,  I  mean. 
And  the  world  is  full  of  people  who  have 
no  need  to  sell  their  beautiful  thoughts!" 


T131] 


CHAPTER  XVI 

IN  WHICH  WE  CATCH  tTP  WITH  SUMMER 

SOME  eminent  wayfarers — one  peculiarly 
beloved — have  discoursed  on  the  romantic 
charm  of  maps.  But  they  have  dwelt  chiefly 
on  the  suggestiveness  of  them  before  the 
journey:  these  unknown  names  of  unknown 
places,  in  types  of  mysteriously  graduated 
importance — what  do  they  stand  for? 
These  mazy  lines,  some  faint  and  wayward 
as  a  hair,  and  some  straight  and  decided  as 
a  steel  track — whence  and  whither  do  they 
lead?  I  love  the  map  best  when  the  journey 
is  done — when  I  can  pore  on  its  lines  as  into 
the  lined  face  of  some  dear  friend  with  whom 
I  have  travelled  the  years,  and  say — here 
this  happened,  here  that  befell!  This  al- 
[132] 


WE  CATCH  UP  WITH  SUMMER 

most  invisible  dot  is  made  of  magic  rocks 
and  is  filled  with  the  song  of  rapids;  this 
infinitesimal  fraction  of  "Scale  five  miles  to 
the  inch"  is  a  haunted  valley  of  purple  pine- 
woods,  and  the  moon  rising,  and  the  lonely 
cry  of  a  sheep  that  has  lost  her  little  one 
somewhere  in  the  folds  of  the  hills.  Here, 
where  is  no  name,  stands  an  old  white  church 
with  a  gilded  cross,  among  little  white  houses 
huddled  together  under  a  bluff.  In  yonder 
garden  the  priest's  cassock  and  trousers  are 
hanging  sacrilegiously  on  a  clothes-line,  and 
you  can  just  see  a  tiny  graveyard  away  up 
on  the  hillside  almost  hidden  in  the  trees. 
Even  sacred  vestments  must  be  laundered 
by  earthly  laundresses,  yet  somehow  it  gives 
one  a  shock  to  see  sacred  vestments  out  of 
the  sanctuary,  profanely  displayed  on  a 
clothes-line.  It  is  as  though  one  should  turn 
the  sacred  chalice  into  a  tea-pot.  A  priest's 
trousers  on  a  clothes-line  might  well  be  the 
[133] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

beginning  of  atheism.  But  I  hope  there 
were  no  such  fanciful  deductive  minds  in 
that  peaceful  hamlet,  and  that  the  faithful 
•there  can  withstand  even  so  profound  a  trial 
of  faith.  If  it  had  been  my  own  creed  that 
those  vestments  represented,  I  should  have 
been  shaken,  I  confess ;  and,  as  it  was,  I  felt 
a  vague  pain  of  disillusionment,  of  an  indig- 
nity done  to  the  unseen;  as,  whatever  the 
creed,  living  or  dead,  may  be,  I  always  feel 
in  those  rooms  often  affected  by  artistic  peo- 
ple, furnished  with  the  bric-a-brac  of  relig- 
ions, indeed  not  their  own,  but,  none  the 
less,  once  or  even  now,  the  living  religions 
of  other  people — rooms  in  which  forgotten, 
or  merely  foreign,  deities  are  despitefully 
used  for  decoration,  and  a  crucifix  and  a 
Buddha  and  an  African  idol  alike  parts  of 
the  artistic  furniture.  But,  no  doubt,  it  is 
to  consider  too  curiously  to  consider  so,  and 
the  good  priest  whose  cassock  and  trousers 
[134] 


WE  CATCH  UP  WITH  SUMMER 

have  occasioned  these  reflections  would 
smilingly  prick  my  fancies,  after  the  dialec- 
tic manner  of  his  calling,  and  say  that  his 
trousers  on  the  clothes-line  were  but  a 
humble  reminder  to  the  faithful  how  near 
to  the  daily  life  of  her  children,  how  human 
at  once  as  well  as  divine,  is  Mother  Church. 

A  cross,  naturally,  marks  the  spot  where 
we  saw  those  priest's  trousers  on  the  line; 
but  there  are  no  crosses  for  a  hundred  places 
of  memorable  moments  of  our  journey; 
they  must  go  without  memorial  even  in  this 
humble  record,  and  Colin  and  I  must  be 
content  to  keep  wayside  shrines  for  them  in 
our  hearts. 

How  insignificant,  on  the  map,  looks  the 
little  stretch  of  some  seventeen  miles  from 
Dansville  to  Cohocton,  yet  I  feel  that  one 
would  need  to  erect  a  cathedral  to  represent 
the  perfect  day  of  golden  October  wayfar- 
ing it  stands  for,  as  on  the  weather-beaten 
[135] 


OCTOBER   VAGABONDS 

map  spread  out  before  me  on  my  writing- 
table,  as  Colin  and  I  so  often  spread  it  out 
under  a  tree  by  some  lonely  roadside,  I  con 
the  place-names  that  to  us  "bring  a  perfume 
in  the  mention."  It  was  a  district  of  quaint, 
romantic-sounding  names,  and  it  fully  jus- 
tified that  fantastic  method  of  choosing  our 
route  by  the  sound  of  the  names  of  places, 
which  I  confessed  to  the  reader  on  an  earlier 
page:  Wayland — Patchin's  Mills — Blood's 
Depot — Cohocton.  And  to  north  and  south 
of  our  route  were  names  such  as  Ossian, 
Stony  Brook  Glen,  Loon  Lake,  Rough  & 
Ready,  Doly's  Corners,  and  Neil  Creek.  I 
confess  that  there  was  a  Perkinsville  to  go 
through — a  beautiful  spot,  too,  for  which 
one  felt  that  sort  of  aesthetic  pity  one  feels 
for  a  beautiful  girl  married  to  a  man,  say, 
of  the  name  of  Podgers.  Perkinsville!  It 
was  as  though  you  said — the  beautiful  Mrs. 
Podgers.  But  there  was  consolation  in  the 
[136J 


WE  CATCH  UP  WITH  SUMMER 

sound  of  Wayland,  with  its  far  call  to  Way- 
land's  smithy  and  Walter  Scott.  And — 
Cohocton!  The  name  to  me  had  a  fine 
Cromwellian  ring;  and  Blood's  Depot — 
what  a  truculent  sound  to  that! — if  you 
haven't  forgotten  the  plumed  dare-devil 
cavalier  who  once  made  a  dash  to  steal  the 
king's  regalia  from  the  Tower.  Again — 
Loon  Lake.  Can  you  imagine  two  more 
lonesome  wailing  words  to  make  a  picture 
with?  But — Cohocton.  How  oddly  right 
my  absurd  instinct  had  been  about  that — 
and,  shall  we  ever  forget  the  unearthly 
beauty  of  the  evening  which  brought  us  at 
dark  to  the  quaint  little  operatic-looking  vil- 
lage, deep  and  snug  among  the  solemn, 
sleeping  hills? 

The  day  had  been  one  of  those  days  that 

come  perhaps  only  in  October — days  of  rich, 

languorous  sunshine  full  of  a  mysterious 

contentment,  days  when  the  heart  says,  "My 

[137] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

cup  runneth  over,"  and  happy  tears  sud- 
denly well  to  the  eyes,  as  though  from  a 
deep  overflowing  sense  of  the  goodness  of 
God.  It  was  really  Summer,  with  the  fra- 
grant mists  of  Autumn  in  her  hair.  It  had 
happened  as  we  had  hoped  on  starting  out. 
We  had  caught  up  with  Summer  on  her  way 
to  New  York,  Summer  all  her  golden  self, 
though  garlanded  with  wreaths  of  Autumn, 
and  about  her  the  swinging  censers  of  burn- 
ing weeds. 

It  was  a  wonderful  valley  we  had  caught 
her  in,  all  rolling  purple  hills  softly  folding 
and  unfolding  in  one  continuous  causeway; 
a  narrow  valley,  and  the  hills  were  high  and 
close  and  gentle,  suggesting  protection  and 
abundance  and  never-ending  peace.  Here 
and  there  the  vivid  green  of  Winter  wheat 
struck  a  note  of  Spring  amid  all  the  mauves 
and  ochres  of  dying  things. 

It  was  a  day  on  which  you  had  no  wish  to 
[138] 


WE  CATCH  UP  WITH  SUMMER 

talk, — you  were  too  happy, — wanted  only 
to  wander  on  and  on  as  in  a  dream  through 
the  mellow  vale — one  of  those  days  in  which 
the  world  seems  too  good  to  be  true,  a  day 
of  which  we  feel,  "This  day  can  never  come 
again."  It  was  like  walking  through  the 
Twenty-third  Psalm.  And,  as  it  closed 
about  us,  as  we  came  to  our  village  at  night- 
fall, and  the  sunshine,  like  a  sinking  lake  of 
gold,  grew  softer  and  softer  behind  the  up- 
lands, the  solid  world  of  rock  and  tree,  and 
stubble-field  and  clustered  barns,  seemed  to 
be  growing  pure  thought — nothing  seemed 
left  of  it  but  spirit ;  and  the  hills  had  become 
as  the  luminous  veil  of  some  ineffable  temple 
of  the  mysterious  dream  of  the  world. 

"Puvis  de  Chavannes!"  said  Colin  to  me 
in  a  whisper. 

And  later  I  tried  to  say  better  what  I 
meant  in  this  song: 

[139] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

Strange,  at  this  still  enchanted  hour, 
How  things  in  daylight  hard  and  rough, 

Iron  and  stone  and  cruel  power, 
Turn  to  such  airy,  starlit  stuff! 

Yon  mountain,  vast  as  Behemoth, 
Seems  but  a  veil  of  silver  breath; 

And  soundless  as  a  flittering  moth, 
And  gentle  as  the  face  of  death, 

Stands  this  stern  world  of  rock  and  tree, 
Lost  in  some  hushed  sidereal  dream — 

The  only  living  thing  a  bird, 
The  only  moving  thing  a  stream. 

'And,  strange  to  think,  yon  silent  star, 
So  soft  and  safe  amid  the  spheres — 

Could  W€  but  see  and  hear  so  far— 
Is  made  of  thunder,  too,  and  tears. 


[140] 


CHAPTER  XVII 

CONTAINING  VALUABLE  STATISTICS 

AND  the  morning  was  like  unto  the  even- 
ing. Summer  was  still  to  be  our  companion, 
and,  as  the  evening  of  our  coming  to  Cohoc- 
ton  had  been  the  most  dreamlike  of  all  the 
ends  of  our  walking  days — had,  so  to  say, 
been  most  evening-spiritual,  so  the  morning 
of  our  Cohocton  seemed  most  morning- 
spiritual  of  all  our  mornings,  most  filled 
with  strange  hope  and  thrill  and  glitter.  We 
were  afoot  earlier  than  usual.  The  sun  had 
hardly  risen,  and  the  shining  mists  still 
wreathed  the  great  hill  which  overhangs  the 
village.  We  were  for  calling  it  a  mountain, 
but  we  were  told  that  it  lacked  fifty  feet 
of  being  a  mountain.  You  are  not  a  moun- 
tain till  you  grow  to  a  thousand  feet.  Our 
[141] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

mountain  was  only  some  nine  hundred  and 
fifty  feet.  Therefore,  it  was  only  entitled 
to  be  called  a  hill.  I  love  information — 
don't  you,  dear  reader? — though,  to  us  hum- 
ble walking  delegates  of  the  ideal,  it  was 
all  one.  But  I  know  for  certain  that  it  was 
a  lane  of  young  maples  which  made  our  ave- 
nue of  light-hearted  departure  out  of  the 
village,  though  I  cannot  be  sure  of  the 
names  of  all  the  trees  of  the  thick  woods 
which  clothed  the  hillside  beneath  which  our 
road  lay,  a  huge  endless  hillside  all  dripping 
and  sparkling,  and  alive  with  little  rills, 
facing  a  broad  plain,  a  sea  of  feathery  .grass 
almost  unbearably  beautiful  with  soft  glit- 
tering dew  and  opal  mists,  out  of  which  rose 
spectral  elms,  like  the  shadows  of  gigantic 
Shanghai  roosters.  All  about  was  the  sound 
of  brooks  musically  rippling  from  the  hills, 
and  there  was  a  chaste  chill  in  the  air,  as 
befitted  the  time  of  day,  for 


VALUABLE  STATISTICS 

Maiden  still  the  morn  isf  and  strange  she  is, 

and  secret, 
Her  cheeks  are  cold  as  cold  sea-shells. 

It  was  all  so  beautiful  that  an  old  thought 
came  back  to  me  that  I  often  had  as  a  child, 
when  I  used  to  be  taken  among  mysterious 
mountains,  for  Summer  holidays :  Do  peo- 
ple really  live  in  such  beautiful  places  all 
the  year  round?  Do  they  live  there  just  like 
ordinary  people  in  towns,  go  about  ordinary 
businesses,  live  ordinary  lives?  It  seemed  to 
me  then,  as  it  seems  to  me  still,  that  such 
places  should  be  kept  sacred,  like  fairyland, 
or  should,  at  least,  be  the  background  of 
high  and  romantic  action,  like  the  scenery 
in  operas.  To  think  of  a  valley  so  beautiful 
as  that  through  which  we  were  walking  be- 
ing put  to  any  other  use  than  that  of  beauty 
seems  preposterous;  but  do  you  know  what 
that  beautiful  valley  was  doing,  while  Colin 
[143] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

and  I  were  thus  poetizing  it,  adoring  its  out- 
lines and  revelling  in  its  tints?  It  was  just 
quietly  growing  potatoes.  Yes!  we  had 
mostly  passed  through  the  apple  country. 
This  garden  of  Eden,  this  Vale  of  Enna, 
was  a  great  potato  country.  And  we 
learned,  too,  that  its  inhabitants  were  by  no 
means  so  pleased  with  beautiful  Cohocton 
Valley  as  we  were.  Here,  we  gathered,  was 
another  beautiful  ne'er-do-well  of  Nature, 
too  occupied  with  her  good  looks  to  be  fit 
for  much  else  than  prinking  herself  out 
with  wild-flowers,  and  falling  into  graceful 
attitudes  before  her  mirror — and  there  were 
mirrors  in  plenty,  many  streams  and  wil- 
lows, in  Cohocton  Valley;  everywhere,  for 
us,  the  mysterious  charm  of  running  water. 
Once  this  idle  daughter  of  Ceres  used  to 
grow  wheat,  wheat  "in  great  plenty,"  but 
now  she  could  be  persuaded  to  grow  nothing 
but  potatoes. 

[144] 


VALUABLE  STATISTICS 

All  this  and  much  more  we  learned  from 
a  friend  who  drew  up  beside  us  in  a  buggy, 
as  I  was  drinking  from  a  gleaming  thread 
of  water  gliding  down  a  mossed  conduit  of 
hollowed  tree-trunks  into  an  old  cauldron 
sunk  into  the  hillside,  and  long  since  turned 
in  ferns  and  lichen.  Colin  was  seated  near 
by  making  a  sketch,  as  I  drank. 

"I  wouldn't  drink  too  much  of  that  water, 
lads,"  said  the  friendly  voice  of  the  dapper 
little  intelligent-faced  man  in  the  buggy. 

What!  not  drink  this  fairy  water? 

"Why,  you  country  folk  are  as  afraid  of 
fresh  water  as  you  are  of  fresh  air,"  I  an- 
swered, laughing. 

"All  right,  it's  up  to  you — but  it's  been  a 
dry  Summer,  you  know." 

And  then  the  little  man's  attention  was 
taken  by  Colin. 

"Sketching?"  he  asked,  and  then  he  said, 
half  shyly,  "Would  you  mind  my  taking  a 
[145] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 


look  how  you  do  it?"  and,  climbing  down 
from  his  buggy,  he  came  and  looked  over 
Colin's  shoulder.  "I  used  to  try  my  hand 
at  it  a  bit  when  I  was  a  boy,  but  those 
blamed  trees  always  beat  me  ...  don't 
bother  you  much,  seemingly  though,"  he 
added,  as  he  watched  Colin's  pencil  with  the 
curiosity  of  a  child. 


TrL 


"I've  a  little  girl  at  home  who  does  pretty 
well,"  he  continued  after  a  moment,  "but 
you've  certainly  got  her  skinned.     I  wish 
she  could  see  you  doing  it." 
[146] 


VALUABLE  STATISTICS 

His  delight  in  a  form  of  skill  which  has 
always  been  as  magical  to  me  as  it  seemed 
to  him,  was  charmingly  boyish,  and  Colin 
turned  over  his  sketch-book,  and  showed  him 
the  notes  he  had  made  as  we  went  along. 
One  of  a  stump  fence  particularly  delighted 
him — those  stump  fences  made  out  of  the 
roots  of  pine  trees  set  side  by  side,  which 
had  been  a  feature  of  the  country  some  miles 
back,  and  which  make  such  a  weird  impres- 
sion on  the  landscape,  like  rows  of  gigantic 
black  antlers,  or  many-armed  Hindoo  idols, 
or  a  horde  of  Zulus  in  fantastic  war-gear 
drawn  up  in  battle-array,  or  the  blackened 
stumps  of  giants'  teeth — Colin  and  I  tried 
all  those  images  and  many  more  to  express 
the  curious  weird  effect  of  coming  upon 
them  in  the  midst  of  a  green  and  smiling 
landscape. 

"Well,tlads,"  he  said,  after  we  had  talked 
awhile,  "I  shall  have  to  be  going.  But 
[147] 


OCTOBER   VAGABONDS 

you've  given  me  a  great  deal  of  pleasure. 
Can't  I  give  you  a  lift  in  exchange  ?  I  guess 
there  is  room  for  the  three  of  us." 

Now  Colin  and  I,  on  the  occasion  of  our 
ride  with  the  apple-farmer,  awhile  back,  had 
held  subtle  casuistical  debate  on  the  legi- 
timacy of  men  ostensibly,  not  to  say  osten- 
tatiously, on  foot  to  New  York  picking  up 
chance  rides  in  this  way.  The  argument 
had  gone  into  pursuit  of  very  fine  distinc- 
tions, and  almost  rivalled  in  its  casuistry  the 
famous  old  Duns  Scotus — or  was  it  Thomas 
Aquinas? — debate  as  to  how  many  angels 
can  dance  on  the  point  of  a  needle.  Once 
we  had  come  to  a  deadlock  as  to  the  kind  of 
vehicle  from  which  it  was  proper  to  ac- 
cept such  hospitality.  Perhaps  it  was  a 
Puritan  scrupulousness  in  my  blood  that 
had  made  me  take  the  stand  that  four- 
wheeled  vehicles,  such  as  wagons,  hay-carts 
and  the  like,  being  slow-moving,  were  per- 
T 148  l 


VALUABLE  STATISTICS 

missible,  but  that  buggies,  or  any  form  of 
rapid  two-wheeled  vehicle,  were  not.  To 
this  Colin  had  retorted  that,  on  that  basis,  a 
tally-ho  would  be  all  right,  or  even  an  auto- 
mobile. So  the  argument  had  wrestled  from 
side  to  side,  and  finally  we  had  compromised. 

We  agreed  that  an  occasional  buggy 
would  be  within  the  vagabond  law  and  that 
any  vehicle,  other,  of  course,  than  an  auto- 
mobile, which  was  not  plying  for  hire — such 
as  a  trolley  or  a  local  train — might  on  occa- 
sion be  gratefully  climbed  into. 

Thus  it  was  that  we  hesitated  a  moment 
at  the  offer  of  our  friend,  a  hesitancy  we 
amused  him  by  explaining  as,  presently, 
conscience-clear,  we  rattled  with  him 
through  the  hills.  He  was  an  interesting 
talker,  a  human-hearted,  keen-minded  man, 
and  he  had  many  more  topics  as  well  as  po- 
tatoes. Besides,  he  was  not  in  the  potato 
business,  but,  as  with  our  former  friend,  his 
[149] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

beautiful  business  was  apples.  Still,  he 
talked  very  entertainingly  about  potatoes; 
telling  us,  among  other  things,  that,  so 
friendly  was  the  soil  toward  that  particular 
vegetable  that  it  yielded  as  much  as  a  hun- 
dred to  a  hundred  and  fifty  bushels  to  the 
acre,  and  that  a  fair-sized  potato  farm  there- 
abouts, properly  handled,  would  pay  for  it- 
self in  a  year.  I  transcribe  this  information, 
not  merely  because  I  think  that,  among  so 
many  words,  the  reader  is  fairly  entitled  to 
expect  some  little  information,  but  chiefly 
for  the  benefit  of  a  friend  of  mine,  the  like 
of  whom,  no  doubt,  the  reader  counts  among 
his  acquaintances.  The  friend  I  mean  has 
a  mind  so  quaintly  voracious  of  facts  that, 
often  when  we  have  been  dining  together 
at  one  of  the  great  hotels,  he  would  specu- 
late, say,  looking  round  the  room  filled  with 
eager  diners,  on  how  many  clams  are  nightly 
consumed  in  New  York  City,  or  how  many 
[150] 


VALUABLE  STATISTICS 

millions  of  fresh  eggs  New  York  requires 
each  morning  for  breakfast.  So  when  next 
I  dine  with  him  I  will  say,  as  he  asks  me 
about  my  trip : 

"Do  you  know  that  in  the  Cohocton  Val- 
ley they  raise  as  much  as  one  hundred  to  one 
hundred  and  fifty  bushels  of  potatoes  to  the 
acre?"  And  he  will  say: 

"You  don't  really  mean  to  say  so?" 

I  have  in  my  private  note-book  much 
more  such  tabulated  information  which  I 
picked  up  and  hoarded  for  his  entertain- 
ment, just  as  whenever  a  letter  comes  to  me 
from  abroad,  I  tear  off  the  stamp  and  save 
it  for  a  little  girl  I  love. 

But,  as  I  said,  our  friend  in  the  buggy 
was  by  no  means  limited  to  potatoes  for  his 
conversation.  He  was  learned  in  the  geog- 
raphy of  the  valley  and  told  us  how  once 
the  Cohocton  River,  now  merely  a  decora- 
tive stream  among  willows,  was  once  a  serv- 
[151] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

iceable  waterway,  how  it  was  once  busy  with 
mills,  and  how  men  used  to  raft  down  it  as 
far  as  Elmira. 

But  "the  springs  were  drying  up."  I 
liked  the  mysterious  sound  of  that,  and  still 
more  his  mysterious  story  of  an  undercur- 
rent from  the  Great  Lakes  that  runs  be- 
neath the  valley.  I  seemed  to  hear  the 
sound  of  its  strange  subterranean  flow  as  he 
talked.  Such  is  the  fun  of  knowing  so  little 
about  the  world.  The  simplest  fact  out  of 
a  child's  geography  thus  comes  to  one  new 
and  marvellous. 

Well,  we  had  to  say  good-bye  at  last  to 
our  friend  at  a  cross-road,  and  we  left  him 
learnedly  discussing  the  current  prices  of 
apples  with  a  business  acquaintance  who 
had  just  driven  up — Kings,  Rambos,  Bald- 
wins, Greenings,  and  Spigs.  And,  by  the 
way,  in  packing  apples  into  barrels,  you 
must  always  pack  them — stems  down.  Be 
careful  to  remember  that. 
[152] 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

A  DITHYRAMBUS  OF  BUTTERMILK 

ONE  discovery  of  some  importance  you 
make  in  walking  the  roads  is  the  compara- 
tive rarity  and  exceeding  preciousness  of 
buttermilk.  We  had,  as  I  said,  caught  up 
with  Summer.  Summer,  need  one  say,  is  a 
thirsty  companion,  and  the  State  seemed 
suddenly  to  have  gone  dry.  We  looked  in 
vain  for  magic  mirrors  by  the  roadside,  over- 
hung with  fairy  grasses,  littered  with 
Autumn  leaves,  and  skated  over  by  nimble 
water-bugs.  As  our  friend  had  said,  the 
springs  seemed  to  have  dried  up.  Now  and 
again  we  would  hail  with  a  great  cry  a 
friendly  pump ;  once  we  came  upon  a  cider- 
mill,  but  it  was  not  working,  and  time  and 
[153] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

again  we  knocked  and  asked  in  vain  for  but- 
termilk. Sometimes,  but  not  often,  we 
found  it.  Once  we  met  a  genial  old  man 
just  leaving  his  farm  door,  and  told  him  that 
we  were  literally  dying  for  a  drink  of  but- 
termilk. Our  expression  seemed  to  tickle 
him. 

"Well!"  he  said,  laughing,  "it  shall  never 
be  said  that  two  poor  creatures  passed  my 
door,  and  died  for  lack  of  a  glass  of  butter- 
milk," and  he  brought  out  a  huge  jug,  for 
which  he  would  accept  nothing  but  our 
blessings.  He  seemed  to  take  buttermilk 
lightly;  but,  one  evening,  we  came  upon  an- 
other old  farmer  to  whom  buttermilk  se.emed 
a  species  of  the  water  of  life  to  be  hoarded 
jealously  and  doled  out  in  careful  quanti- 
ties at  strictly  market  rates. 

In  town  one  imagines  that  country  people 
give  their  buttermilk  to  the  pigs.  At  any 
rate,  they  didn't  give  it  to  us.  We  paid 
[154] 


A  DITHYRAMBUS 

that  old  man  twenty  cents,  for  we  drank  two 
glasses  apiece.  And  first  we  had  knocked 
at  the  farm  door,  and  told  our  need  to  a 
pretty  young  woman,  who  answered,  with 
some  hesitancy,  that  she  would  call  "father." 
She  seemed  to  live  in  some  awe  of  "father," 
as  we  well  understood  when  a  tall,  raw- 
boned,  stern,  old  man,  of  the  caricature 
"Brother  Jonathan"  type,  appeared  grimly, 
making  an  iron  sound  with  a  great  bunch  of 
keys.  On  hearing  our  request,  he  said 
nothing,  but,  motioning  to  us  to  follow, 
stalked  across  the  farmyard  to  a  small  build- 
ing under  a  great  elm-tree.  There  were  two 
steps  down  to  the  door,  and  it  had  a  mys- 
terious appearance.  It  might  have  been  a 
family  vault,  a  dynamite  magazine,  or  the 
Well  at  the  World's  End.  It  was  the 
strong-room  of  the  milk;  and,  when  the  grim 
old  guardian  of  the  dairy  unlocked  the  door, 
[155] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

with  a  sound  of  rusty  locks  and  falling 
bolts,  there,  cool  and  cloistral,  were  the  fra- 
grant pans  and  bowls,  the  most  sacred  ves- 
sels of  the  farm. 

"She  bathed  her  body  many  a  time 
In  fountains  filled  with  milk'' 

I  hummed  to  Colin;  but  I  took  care  that 
the  old  man  didn't  hear  me.  And  we 
agreed,  as  we  went  on  again  along  the  road, 
that  he  did  right  to  guard  well  and  charge 
well  for  so  noble  and  so  innocent  a  drink. 
Indeed,  the  old  fellow's  buttermilk  was  so 
good  that  I  think  it  must  have  gone  to  my 
head.  In  no  other  way  can  I  account  for 
the  following  dithyrambic  song: 

Let  whoso  will  sing  Bacchus'  vine, 
We  know  a  drink  that's  more  divine; 
[156] 


A  DITHYRAMBUS 

'Tis  white  and  innocent  as  doves, 
Fragrant  and  bosom-white  as  love's 

White  bosom  on  a  Summer  day, 
And  fragrant  as  the  hawthorn  spray. 

Let  Dionysus  and  his  crew, 
Garlanded,  drain  their  fevered  brew, 

And  in  the  orgiastic  bowl 
Drug  and  besot  the  sacred  soul; 

This  simple  country  cup  we  drain 
Knows  not  the  ghosts  of  sin  and  pain, 

No  fates  or  furies  follow  him 

Who  sips  from  its  cream-mantled  rim. 

Yea!  all  his  thoughts  are  country -sweet, 
And  safe  the  walking  of  his  feet, 
[157] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

However  hard  and  long  the  way— 
With  country  sleep  to  end  the  day. 

To  drain  this  cup  no  man  shall  rue — 
The  innocent  madness  of  the  dew 

Who  shall  repent,  or  frenzy  fine 
Of  morning  star,  or  the  divine 

Inebriation  of  the  hours 

When  May  roofs  in  the  world  with  flowers! 

About  this  cup  the  swallows  skim, 
And  the  low  milking -star  hangs  dim 

Across  the  meadows,  and  the  moon 
Is  near  in  heaven — the  young  moon; 

And  murmurs  sweet  of  field  and  hill 
Loiter  awhile,  and  all  is  still. 

[158] 


A  DITHYRAMBUS 

As  in  some  chapel  dear  to  Pan, 
The  fair  milk  glimmers  in  the  can, 

And,  in  the  silence  cool  and  white, 
The  cream  mounts  through  the  listening 
night; 

And,  all  around  the  sleeping  house, 
You  hear  the  breathing  of  the  cows, 

And  drowsy  rattle  of  the  chain, 
Till  lo!  the  blue-eyed  morn  again. 


[159J 


CHAPTER  XIX 

A  GROWL  ABOUT  AMERICAN  COUNTRY  HOTELS 

THOUGH  Colin  and  I  had  been  walking 
but  a  very  few  days,  after  the  first  day  or 
two  it  seemed  as  though  we  had  been  out  on 
the  road  for  weeks;  as  though,  indeed,  we 
had  spent  our  lives  in  the  open  air;  and  it 
needed  no  more  than  our  brief  experience 
for  us  to  realize  what  one  so  often  reads  of 
those  who  do  actually  live  their  lives  out-of- 
doors,  gypsies,  sailors,  cowboys  and  the  like 
— how  intolerable  to  them  is  a  roof,  and  how 
literally  they  gasp  for  air  and  space  in  the 
confined  walls  of  cities. 

Bed  in  the  bush  with  stars  to  see, 
Bread  I  dip  in  the  river — 
[160] 


AMERICAN  COUNTRY  HOTELS 

There's  the  life  for  a  man  like  me, 
There's  the  life  forever. 

The  only  time  of  the  day  when  our  spirits 
began  to  fail  was  toward  its  close,  when  the 
shadows  of  supper  and  bed  in  some  inclem- 
ent inn  began  to  fall  over  us,  and  we  con- 
fessed to  each  other  a  positive  sense  of  fear 
in  our  evening  approach  to  the  abodes  of 
men.  After  a  long,  safe,  care- free  day,  in 


the   company  of  liberating  prospects  ana 

sweet-breathed  winds,  there  seemed  a  curi- 

[161] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

ous  lurking  menace  in  the  most  harmless 
village,  as  well  as  an  unspeakable  irksome- 
ness  in  its  inharmonious  interruption  of  our 
mood.  To  emerge,  saturated,  body  and 
soul,  with  the  sweet  scents  and  sounds  and 
sights  of  a  day's  tramp,  out  of  the  medita- 
tive leafiness  and  spiritual  temper  of  natural 
things,  into  the  garishly  lit  street  of  some 
little  provincial  town,  animated  with  the 
clumsy  mirth  of  silly  young  country  folks, 
aping  so  drearily  the  ribaldry,  say,  of  El- 
mira,  is  a  painful  anticlimax  to  the  spirit. 
Had  it  only  been  real  Summer,  instead  of 
Indian  Summer,  we  should,  of  course,  have 
been  real  gypsies,  and  made  our  beds  under 
the  stars,  but,  as  it  was,  we  had  no  choice. 
Or,  had  we  been  walking  in  Europe  . .  .  yes, 
I  am  afraid  the  truth  must  out,  and  that 
our  real  dread  at  evening  was — the  Ameri- 
can country  hotel.  With  the  best  wish  in 
the  world,  it  is  impossible  to  be  enthusiastic 
[162] 


AMERICAN  COUNTRY  HOTELS 

over  the  American  country  hotel.  How 
ironically  the  kindly  old  words  used  to  come 
floating  to  me  out  of  Shakespeare  each  even- 
ing as  the  shadows  fell,  and  the  lights  came 
out  in  the  windows — "to  take  mine  ease  at 
mine  inn;"  and  assuredly  it  was  on  another 
planet  that  Shenstone  wrote: 

Whoe'er  hath  travelled  life's  dull  round, 
Whatever  his  fortunes  may  have  been, 
Must  sigh  to  think  he  still  has  found 
His  warmest  welcome  at  an  inn. 

Had  Shenstone  been  writing  in  an  Amer- 
ican country  hotel,  his  tune  would  probably 
have  been  more  after  this  fashion:  "A  won- 
derful day  has  come  to  a  dreary  end  in  the 
most  sepulchral  of  hotels,  a  mouldy,  barn- 
like  place,  ill-lit,  mildewed  and  unspeak- 
ably dismal.  A  comfortless  room  with  two 
beds  and  two  low-power  electric  lights,  two 
1 163  ] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

stiff  chairs,  an  uncompanionable  sofa,  and 
some  ghastly  pictures  of  simpering  naked 
women.  We  have  bought  some  candles,  and 
made  a  candlestick  out  of  a  soap-dish.  Colin 
is  making  the  best  of  it  with  'The  Beloved 
Vagabond/  and  I  have  drawn  up  one  of 
the  chairs  to  a  table  with  a  mottled  marble 
top,  and  am  writing  this  amid  a  gloom  which 
you  could  cut  with  a  knife,  and  which  is  so 
perfect  of  its  kind  as  to  be  almost  laughable. 
But  for  the  mail,  which  we  found  with  un- 
utterable thankfulness  at  the  post-office,  I 
hardly  dare  think  what  would  have  hap- 
pened to  us,  to  what  desperate  extremities 
we  might  not  have  been  driven,  though  even 
the  possibilities  of  despair  seem  limited  in 
this  second-hand  tomb  of  a  town.  .  .  ." 

Here  Colin  looks  up  with  a  wry  smile  and 
ironically  quotes  from  the  wisdom  of  Para- 
got:    "What  does  it  matter  where  the  body 
finds  itself,  so  long  as  the  soul  has  its  serene 
[164] 


AMERICAN  COUNTRY  HOTELS 

habitations?"  This  wail  is  too  typical  of 
most  of  our  hotel  experiences.  As  a  rule  we 
found  the  humble,  cheaper  hotels  best,  and, 
whenever  we  had  a  choice  of  two,  chose  the 
less  pretentious. 

Sometimes  as,  on  entering  a  town  or  vil- 
lage, we  asked  some  passer-by  about  the 
hotels,  we  would  be  looked  over  and  some- 
what doubtfully  asked:  "Do  you  want  a 
two-dollar  house?"  And  we  soon  learned 
to  pocket  our  pride,  and  ask  if  there  was  not 
a  cheaper  house.  Strange  that  people  whose 
business  is  hospitality  should  be  so  inhospi- 
table, and  strange  that  the  American  travel- 
ling salesman,  a  companionable  creature, 
not  averse  from  comfort,  should  not  have 
created  a  better  condition  of  things.  For 
the  inn  should  be  the  natural  harmonious 
close  to  the  day,  as  much  a  part  of  the  day's 
music  as  the  setting  sun.  It  should  be  the 
gratefully  sought  shelter  from  the  homeless 
[165] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

night,  the  sympathetic  friend  of  hungry 
stomachs  and  dusty  feet,  the  cozy  ingle  of 
social  pipes  and  dreamy  after-dinner  talk, 
the  abode  of  snowy  beds  for  luxuriously 
aching  limbs,  lavendered  sheets  and  pleasant 
dreams. 

But,  as  people  without  any  humour  usu- 
ally say,  "A  sense  of  humour  helps  under 
all  circumstances";  and  we  managed  to  ex- 
tract a  great  deal  of  fun  out  of  the  rigours 
of  the  American  country  hotel. 

In  one  particularly  inhospitable  home  of 
hospitality,  for  example,  we  found  no  little 
consolation  from  the  directions  printed  over 
the  very  simple  and  familiar  device  for  call- 
ing up  the  hotel  desk.  The  device  was 
nothing  more  remarkable  than  the  button  of 
an  ordinary  electric  bell,  which  you  were, 
in  the  usual  way,  to  push  once  for  bell-boy, 
twice  for  ice-water,  three  times  for  chamber- 
maid, and  so  on.  However,  the  hotel  evi- 
[166] 


AMERICAN  COUNTRY  HOTELS 

dently  regarded  it  as  one  of  the  marvels  of 
advanced  science  and  referred  to  it,  in  sol- 
emnly printed  "rules"  for  its  use,  as  no  less 
than  "The  Emergency  Drop  Annuncia- 
tor!" Angels  of  the  Annunciation!  what  a 
heavenly  phrase! 

But  this  is  an  ill-tempered  chapter — let 
us  begin  another. 


[167] 


CHAPTER  XX 

ONIONS,  PIGS  AND  HICKORY-NUTS 

ONE  feature  of  the  countryside  in  which 
from  time  to  time  we  found  innocent  amuse- 
ment was  the  blackboards  placed  outside 
farmhouses,  on  which  are  written,  that  is, 
"annunciated,"  the  various  products  the 
farmer  has  for  sale,  such  as  apples, 
potatoes,  honey,  and  so  forth.  On  one 
occasion  we  read:  "Get  your  horses'  teeth 
floated  here."  There  was  no  one  to  ask 
about  what  this  mysterious  proclamation 
meant.  No  doubt  it  was  clear  as  daylight 
to  the  neighbours,  but  to  us  it  still  remains 
a  mystery.  Perhaps  the  reader  knows  what 
it  meant.  Then  on  another  occasion  we 
read:  "Onions  and  Pigs  For  Sale."  Why 
[168] 


PIGS  AND  HICKORY-NUTS 

this  curious  collocation  of  onions  and  pigs? 
Colin  suggested  that,  of  course,  the  onions 
were  to  stuff  the  pigs  with. 

"And  here's  an  idea,"  he  continued. 
"Suppose  we  go  in  and  buy  a  little  suck- 
ling-pig and  a  string  of  onions.  Then  we 
will  buy  a  yard  of  two  of  blue  ribbon  and 
tie  it  round  the  pig's  neck,  and  you  shall 
lead  it  along  the  road,  weeping.  I  will  walk 
behind  it,  with  the  onions,  grinning  from  ear 
to  ear.  And  when  any  one  meets  us,  and 
asks  the  meaning  of  the  strange  procession, 
you  will  say:  'I  am  weeping  because  our 
little  pig  has  to  die!'  And  if  any  one  says 
to  me,  'Why  are  you  grinning  from  ear  to 
ear?'  I  shall  answer,  'Because  I  am  going 
to  eat  him.  We  are  going  to  stuff  him  with 
onions  at  the  next  inn,  and  eat  roast  pig  at 
the  rising  of  the  moon.' ' 

But  we  lacked  courage  to  put  our  little 
joke  into  practice,  fearing  an  insufficient 
[169] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

appreciation  of  the  fantastic  in  that  particu- 
lar region. 

We  were  now  making  for  Watkins,  and 
had  spent  the  night  at  Bradford,  a  particu- 
larly charming  village  almost  lost  amid  the 
wooded  hills  of  another  lovely  and  spacious 
valley,  through  which  we  had  lyrically 
walked  the  day  before.  Bradford  is  a  real 
country  village,  and  was  already  all  in  a 
darkness  smelling  of  cows  and  apples,  when 
we  groped  for  it  among  the  woods  the  even- 
ing before.  At  starting  out  next  morning, 
we  inquired  the  way  to  Watkins  of  a  store- 
keeper standing  at  his  shop-door.  He  was 
in  conversation  with  an  acquaintance,  and 
our  questions  occasioned  a  lively  argument 
as  to  which  was  the  better  of  two  roads. 
The  acquaintance  was  for  the  road  through 
"Pine  Creek,"  and  he  added,  with  a  grim 
smile,  "I  guess  I  should  know;  I've  travelled 
it  often  enough  with  a  heavy  load  behind'*; 
[170] 


PIGS  AND  HICKORY-NUTS 

and  the  recollection  of  the  rough  hills  he  had 
gone  bumping  over,  all  evidently  fresh  in 
his  mind,  seemed  to  give  him  a  curious 
amusement.  It  transpired  that  he  was  an 
undertaker ! 

So  we  took  the  road  to  Pine  Creek,  but 
at  the  threshold  of  the  village  our  fancy  was 
taken  by  the  particularly  quaint  white 
wooden  meeting-house,  surrounded  on  three 
sides  with  tie-up  sheds  for  vehicles,  each  stall 
having  a  name  affixed  to  it,  like  a  pew:  "P. 
Yawger,"  "A.  W.  Gillum,"  "Pastor,"  and 
so  on.  Here  the  pious  of  the  district  tied 
up  their  buggies  while  they  went  within  to 
pray,  and  these  sacred  stalls  made  a  quaint 
picture  for  the  imagination  of  outlying 
farmers  driving  to  meeting  over  the  hills  on 
Sabbath  mornings. 

It  was  a  beautiful  morning  of  veiled  sun- 
shine, so  warm  that  some  hardy  crickets 
chirped  faintly  as  we  went  along.  Once  a 
[171] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 


blue  jay  came  and  looked  at  us,  and  the 
squirrels  whirred  among  the  chestnuts  and 
hickories,  and  the  roadsides  were  so  thickly 
strewn  with  fallen  nuts  that  we  made  but 
slow  progress,  stopping  all  the  time  to  fill 
our  pockets 

For  a  full  hour  we  sat  down  with  a  couple 
of  stones  for  nut-crackers,  and  forgot  each 
other  and  everything  else  in  the  hypnoti- 
[172] 


PIGS  AND  HICKORY-NUTS 

zing  occupation  of  cracking  hickory-nuts, 
And  we  told  each  other  that  thus  do  grown 
sad  men  become  boys  again,  by  a  woodside, 
of  an  October  morning,  cracking  hickory- 
nuts,  the  world  well  lost. 


173] 


CHAPTER  XXI 

OCTOBER  ROSES  AND  A  YOUNG  GIRI/S  FACE 

THE  undertaker  was  certainly  right  about 
the  road.  I  think  he  must  have  had  a  flash 
of  poetic  insight  into  our  taste  in  roads. 
This  was  not,  as  a  rule,  understood  by  the 
friendly  country  folk.  Their  ideas  and 
ours  as  to  what  constituted  a  good  road  dif- 
fered beyond  the  possibility  of  harmonizing. 
When  they  said  that  a  road  was  good  they 
meant  that  it  was  straight,  level,  and  busi- 
nesslike. When  they  said  that  a  road  was 
bad  they  meant  that  it  was  rugged,  rambling 
and  picturesque.  So,  to  their  bewilderment, 
whenever  we  had  a  choice  of  good  or  bad 
roads,  we  always  chose  the  bad.  And,  to 
get  at  what  we  really  wanted,  we  learned  to 
[174] 


OCTOBER  ROSES 

inquire  which  was  the  worst  road  to  such 
and  such  a  place.  That  we  knew  would  be 
the  road  for  us.  From  their  point  of  view, 
the  road  we  were  on  was  as  bad  as  could  be ; 
but,  as  I  said,  the  undertaker  evidently  un- 
derstood us,  and  had  sent  us  into  a  region  of 
whimsically  sudden  hills  and  rock  and  wood- 
ed wilderness,  a  swart  country  of  lonely, 
rugged  uplands,  with  but  a  solitary  house 
here  and  there  for  miles.  It  was  resting  at 
the  top  of  one  of  these  hard-won  acclivities 
that  we  came  upon — and  remember  that  it 
was  the  middle  of  October — two  wild  roses 
blooming  by  the  roadside.  This  seems  a  fact 
worthy  the  attention  of  botanical  societies, 
and  I  still  have  the  roses  pressed  for  the  in- 
spection of  the  learned  between  the  pages  of 
my  travelling  copy  of  Hans  Andersen's 
"Fairy  Tales." 

'A  fact  additionally  curious  was  that  the 
bush  on  which  the  flowers  grew  seemed  to 
[175] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

be  the  only  rose-bush  in  the  region.  We 
looked  about  us  in  vain  to  find  another. 
How  had  that  single  rose-bush  come  to  be, 
an  uncompanioned  exotic,  in  the  rough  so- 
ciety of  pines  and  oaks  and  hickories,  on  a 
rocky  hill-top  swept  by  the  North  wind,  and 
how  had  those  frail,  scented  petals  found 
strength  and  courage  thus  to  bloom  alone 
in  the  doorway  of  Winter?  And,  why,  out 
of  all  the  roses  of  the  world,  had  these  two 
been  chosen,  still,  so  late  in  the  year,  to  hold 
up  the  tattered  standard  of  Summer? 

Why,  in  the  empty  Autumn  woods, 
And  all  the  loss  and  end  of  things, 

Does  one  leaf  linger  on  the  tree; 
Why  is  it  only  one  bird  sings? 

And  why,  across  the  aching  field, 
Does  one  lone  cricket  chirrup  on; 
[176] 


OCTOBER  ROSES 

Why  one  surviving  butterfly, 

With  all  its  bright  companions  gone? 

"And  why,  when  faces  all  about 
Whiten  and  wither  hour  by  hour, 

Does  one  old  face  bloom  on  so  sweet, 
'As  young  as  when  it  was  a  flower? 

The  same  mystery  was  again  presented  to 
us  a  little  farther  along  the  road,  as  we 
stopped  at  a  lone  schoolhouse  among  the 
hills,  the  only  house  to  be  seen,  and  asked 
our  way  of  the  young  school-marm.  The 
door  had  been  left  half  open,  and,  knocking, 
we  had  stepped  into  the  almost  empty 
schoolroom,  with  its  portrait  of  Lincoln  and 
a  map  of  the  United  States.  Three  scholars 
sat  there  with  their  kindly-faced  teacher, 
studying  geography  amid  the  silence  of  the 
hills,  which  the  little  room  seemed  to  concen- 
trate in  a  murmuring  hush,  like  a  shell.  K 
[177] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

little  boy  sat  by  himself  a  desk  or  two  be- 
hind two  young  girls,  and  as  we  entered, 
and  the  studious  faces  looked  up  in  surprise, 
we  saw  only  the  pure  brows  and  the  great 
spiritual  eyes  of  the  older  girl,  almost  a 
woman,  and  we  thought  of  the  lonely  roses 
we  had  found  up  on  the  hillside.  Here  was 
another  rose  blooming  in  the  wilderness,  a 
face  lovely  and  beautiful  as  a  spring  reflect- 
ing the  sky  in  the  middle  of  a  wood.  How 
had  she  come  there,  that  beautiful  child- 
woman  in  the  solitude?  By  what  caprice  of 
the  strange  law  of  the  distribution  of  fair 
faces  had  she  come  to  flower  in  this  particu- 
lar waste  place  of  the  earth? — for  her  face 
had  surely  come  a  long  way,  been  blown 
blossom-wise  on  some  far  wandering  wind, 
from  realms  of  old  beauty  and  romance,  and 
it  had  the  exiled  look  of  all  beautiful  things. 
Could  she  be  a  plain  farmer's  daughter,  in- 
digenous to  that  stubborn  soil?  No,  surely 
[178] 


OCTOBER  ROSES 

she  was  not  that,  and  yet — how  had  she  come 
to  be  there?  But  these  were  questions  we 
could  not  put  to  the  school-marm.  We  could 
only  ask  our  road,  and  the  prosaic  possibili- 
ties of  lunch  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  go 
on  our  way.  Nor  could  I  press  that  rose 
among  the  pages  of  my  book — but,  as  I 
write,  I  wonder  if  it  is  still  making  sweet 
that  desolate  spot,  and  still  studying  irrel- 
evant geography  in  the  silence  of  the  hills. 
However,  we  did  learn  something  about 
our  young  human  rose  at  a  farmhouse  a  mile 
or  so  farther  on.  While  a  motherly  house- 
wife prepared  us  some  lunch,  all  a-bustle 
with  expectancy  of  an  imminent  inroad  of 
harvesters  due  to  thresh  the  corn,  and 
liable  to  eat  all  before  them,  a  sprightly 
young  daughter,  who  attended  the  same 
school,  and  whom  we  had  told  about  our  call 
at  the  schoolhouse,  entertained  us  with  girl- 
ish gossip  of  the  neighbourhood.  So  we 
[179] 


OCTOBER   VAGABONDS 

learned  that  our  fancies  had  not  been  so  far 
wrong,  but  that  our  beautiful  young  face 
had  indeed  come  from  as  far  as  France,  the 
orphaned  child  of  a  French  sailor  and  an 
English  mother,  come  over  the  seas  for  a 
home  with  a  farmer  uncle  near  by.  Strange 
are  the  destinies  of  beautiful  faces.  All  the 
way  from  France  to  Pine  Creek!  Poor  lit- 
tle world-wandered  rose! 

And  while  we  ate  our  lunch,  the  mother 
had  a  sad,  beautiful  story  of  a  dead  son  and 
a  mother's  tears  to  tell  us,  too  sacred  to  tell 
again.  How  many  beautiful  faces  there  are 
hidden  about  the  world,  and  how  many 
beautiful  sad  stories  hidden  in  the  broken 
hearts  of  mothers! 


[180] 


CHAPTER  XXII 

CONCERNING  THE   POPULAR   TASTE    IN   SCEN- 
ERY AND  SOME   HAPPY  PEOPLE 

WE  had  somewhat  scorned  the  idea  of 
Watkins,  as  being  one  of  Nature's  show- 
places.  In  fact,  Watkins  Glen  is,  so  to  say, 
so  nationally  beautiful  as  latterly  to  have 
received  a  pension  from  the  Government  of 
the  United  States,  which  now  undertakes 
the  conservation  of  its  fantastic  chasms  and 
waterfalls.  Some  one — I  am  inclined  to 
think  it  was  myself — once  said  that  he  never 
wished  to  go  to  Switzerland,  because  he 
feared  that  the  Alps  would  be  greasy  with 
being  climbed.  I  think  it  is  clear  what  he 
meant.  To  one  who  loves  Nature  for  him- 
self, has  his  own  discovering  eyes  for  her 
[181] 


OCTOBER   VAGABONDS 

multiform  and  many-mooded  beauty,  it  is 
distasteful  to  have  some  excursionist  effect 
of  spectacular  scenery  labelled  and  thrust 
upon  him  with  a  showman's  raptures;  and, 
in  revulsion  from  the  hypocritical  admira- 
tion of  the  vulgar,  he  turns  to  the  less 
obvious  and  less  melodramatic  beauty  of  the 
natural  world.  The  common  eye  can  see  Na- 
ture's beauty  only  in  such  melodramatic  and 
sentimental  forms — dizzy  chasms,  foaming 
waterfalls,  snow-capped  mountains  and 
flagrant  sunsets,  just  as  it  can  realize  Na- 
ture's wildness  of  heart  only  in  a  menagerie. 
That  a  squirrel  or  a  meadow-lark,  or  even  a 
guinea-pig,  is  just  as  wild  as  the  wild  beasts 
in  a  travelling  circus  is  outside  the  compre- 
hension of  the  vulgar,  who  really  hunger 
after  mere  marvels,  whatever  they  may  be, 
and  actually  have  no  eyes  for  beauty  at  all. 
Thus  really  sublime  and  grandiose  effects 
of  Nature  are  apt  to  lose  their  edge  for  us 
[182] 


POPULAR  TASTE  IN  SCENERY- 

by  over-popularization,  as  many  of  her 
scenes  and  moods  have  come  to  seem  plati- 
tude from  being  over-painted.  Niagara  has 
suffered  far  more  from  the  sentimental 
tourist  and  the  landscape  artist  than  from 
all  the  power-houses,  and  one  has  to  make 
a  strenuous  effort  of  detachment  from  its 
excursionist  associations  to  appreciate  its 
sublimity. 

Thus  Colin  and  I  discussed,  in  a  some- 
what bored  way,  whether  we  should  trouble 
to  visit  the  famous  Watkins  Glen,  as  we  sat 
over  supper  in  a  Watkins  hotel,  one  of  the 
few  really  comfortable  and  cordial  hotels  we 
met  in  our  wanderings,  and  we  smiled  to 
think  what  the  natives  would  have  made  of 
our  conversation.  Two  professional  lovers  of 
beauty  calmly  discussing  whether  it  was 
worth  while  walking  half  a  mile  to  see  one 
of  the  natural,  and  national,  wonders  of 
America!  Why,  last  season  more  than  half 
[183] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

a  million  visitors  kodaked  it,  and  wrote  their 
names  on  the  face  of  the  rocks!  However, 
a  great  natural  effect  holds  its  own  against 
no  little  vulgarization,  and  Watkins  Glen 
soon  made  us  forget  the  trippers  and  the 
concrete  footpaths  and  iron  railings  of  the 
United  States  government,  in  the  fantasies 
of  its  weirdly  channelled  gorge  and  myste- 
rious busy  water. 

Watkins  itself,  despite  its  name,  is  suf- 
ficiently favoured  by  Nature  to  make  an 
easy  annual  living,  situated  as  it  is  at  the 
south  end  of  the  beautiful  Seneca  Lake,  and 
at  the  head  of  a  nobly  picturesque  valley 
some  twenty  miles  long,  with  a  pretty  river 
spreading  out  into  flashing  reed-grown  flats, 
sheer  cliffs  and  minor  waterfalls,  here  and 
there  a  vineyard  on  the  hillside,  or  the 
vivid  green  of  celery  trenches  in  the 
dark  loam  of  the  hollows,  all  the  way  to — 
Elmira!  The  river  and  the  trolley  run  side 
[184] 


POPULAR  TASTE  IN  SCENERY 

by  side  the  whole  charming  way,  and,  as  you 
near  Elmira,  you  come  upon  latticed  barns 
that  waft  you  the  fragrance  of  drying  to- 
bacco-leaves, suspended  longitudinally  for 
the  wind  to  play  through.  On  the  morning 
of  our  leaving  Watkins,  we  had  been  roused 
a  little  earlier  than  usual  by  mirthful  sounds 
in  the  street  beneath  our  hotel  windows. 
Light-hearted  voices  joking  each  other 
floated  up  to  us,  and  some  one  out  of  the 
gladness  of  his  heart  was  executing  a 
spirited  shake-down  on  the  sidewalk — at  six 
o'clock  of  a  misty  October  morning.  Look- 
ing out,  we  caught  an  endearing  glimpse  of 
the  life  of  the  most  lovable  of  all  professions. 
It  was  a  theatrical  company  that  had  played 
a  one-night  stand  at  the  local  opera-house 
the  evening  before,  and  was  now  once  more 
upon  its  wandering  way.  They  had  cer- 
tainly been  up  till  past  midnight,  but  here 
they  were,  at  six  o'clock  of  the  morning, 
[185] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

merry  as  larks,  gay  as  children,  waiting  for 
the  Elmira  trolley.  Presently  the  car  came 
clanging  up,  and  alongside  drew  up  a  big 
float,  containing  baggage  and  rolls  of 
scenery — all  of  which,  to  our  astonishment, 
by  some  miracle  of  loading  known  only  to 
baggagemen,  was  in  a  few  moments  stowed 
away  into  the  waiting  car.  When  the  last 
property  was  shipped,  the  conductor  rang 
his  bell,  by  way  of  warning,  and  the  whole 
group,  like  a  flight  of  happy  birds,  climbed 
chattering  into  the  car.  "All  aboard,"  called 
the  conductor,  once  more  ringing  his  bell, 
and  off  they  went,  leaving  a  trail  of  laughter 
in  the  morning  air. 

"'Beloved  Vagabonds!'"  said  Colin,  as 
we  turned  away,  lonely,  from  our  windows, 
with,  I  hardly  know  why,  a  suspicion  of 
tears  in  our  eyes. 


[186] 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  SUSQUEHANNA 

HERE  for  a  while  a  shadow  seemed  to  fall 
over  our  trip.  No  doubt  it  was  the  shadow 
of  the  great  town  we  were  approaching. 
Not  that  we  have  anything  against  Elmira, 
though  possibly  its  embattled  reformatory, 
frowning  from  the  hillside,  contributed  its 
gloomy  associations  to  our  spirits.  It  was 
against  towns  in  general  that  our  gorge 
rose.  Did  our  vagabond  ethics  necessitate 
our  conscientiously  tramping  every  foot  of 
these  "gritty  paving-stones,"  we  asked  each 
other,  as  we  entered  upon  a  region  of  de- 
pressing suburbs,  and  we  called  a  halt  on 
the  spot  to  discuss  the  point.  The  discus- 
sion was  not  long,  and  it  was  brought  to  a 
[187] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

cheerful,  demoralized  end  by  the  approach 
of  the  trolley,  into  which,  regardless  of  right 
or  wrong,  we  climbed  with  alacrity,  not  to 
alight  till  not  only  Elmira  was  left  behind, 
but  more  weary  suburbs,  too,  on  the  other 
side.  That  night,  as  old  travellers  phrase  it, 
we  lay  at  Waverly,  on  the  frontier  of  Penn- 
sylvania, a  sad,  dirty  little  town,  grotesquely 
belying  its  romantic  name,  and  only  sur- 
passed in  squalor  by  the  classically  named 
Athens — beware,  reader,  of  American  towns 
named  out  of  classical  dictionaries!  Here, 
however,  our  wanderings  in  the  brick- and- 
mortar  wilderness  were  to  end,  for  by  a 
long,  romantic,  old,  covered  bridge  we 
crossed  the  Chemung  River,  and  there  once 
more,  on  the  other  side,  was  Nature,  lovelier 
than  ever,  awaiting  us.  Not  Dante,  when 
he  emerged  from/  Hades  and  again  beheld 
the  stars,  drew  deeper  breaths  of  escape 
than  we,  thus  escaping  from — Athens! 
[188] 


THE  SUSQUEHANNA 

And  soon  we  were  to  meet  the  Susque- 
hanna — beautiful,  broad-bosomed  name, 
that  has  always  haunted  my  imagination  like 
the  name  of  some  beautiful  savage  princess 
— La  belle  sauvage.  Susquehanna!  What  a 
southern  opulence  in  the  soft,  seductive  syl- 
lables !  ,Yes,  soon  we  were  to  meet  the  Sus- 
quehanna. Nor  had  we  long  to  wait,  and 
little  did  we  suspect  what  our  meeting  with 
that  beautiful  river  was  to  mean. 

The  Chemung,  on  whose  east  bank  we 
were  now  walking,  seemed  a  noble  enough 
river,  very  broad  and  all  the  more  pic- 
turesque for  being  shallow  with  the  Summer 
drought;  and  its  shining  reaches  and  wooded 
banks  lifted  up  our  hearts.  She,  like  our- 
selves, was  on  her  way  to  join  the  Susque- 
hanna, a  mile  or  two  below,  and  we  said  to 
ourselves,  that,  beautiful  as  the  land  had 
been  through  which  we  had  already  passed, 
we  were  now  entering  on  a  Nature  of  more 
[189] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

heroic  mould,  mightier  contours,  and  larger 
aspects.  We  were  henceforth  to  walk  in  the 
company  of  great  rivers :  the  Susquehanna, 
like  some  epic  goddess,  was  to  lead  us  to  the 
Lehigh;  the  Blue  Mountains  were  to  bring 
us  to  the  Delaware ;  and  the  uplands  of  Sul- 
livan County  were  to  bring  us  to — the 
lordly  gates  of  the  Hudson. 

Our  chests  expanded  as  imagination  lux- 
uriated in  the  pictures  it  made.  Our  walk 
was  only  just  beginning. 


T190] 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

AND  UNEXPECTEDLY  THE  LAST 

WE  had  seen  the  two  great  rivers  sweep 
into  each  other's  arms  in  a  broad  glory  of 
sunlit  water,  meeting  at  the  bosky  end  of  a 
wooded  promontory,  and  yes!  there  was  the 
Susquehanna  glittering  far  beneath — the 
beautiful  name  I  had  so  often  seen  and  won- 
dered about,  painted  on  the  sides  of  giant 
freight-cars!  Yes,  there  was  actually  the 
great  legendary  river.  It  was  a  very  warm, 
almost  sultry  noonday,  more  like  midsum- 
mer than  mid-October,  and  the  river  was 
almost  blinding  in  its  flashing  beauty. 
Loosening  our  knapsacks,  we  called  a  halt 
and,  leaning  over  the  railing  guarding  the 
precipitous  bank,  luxuriated  in  the  visionary 
[191] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

scene.  So  high  was  the  bank,  and  so  broad 
the  river,  that  we  seemed  lifted  up  into 
space,  and  the  river,  dreamily  flowing  be- 
neath a  gauze  veil  of  heat-mist,  seemed  miles 
below  us  and  drowsily  unreal.  Its  course 
inshore  was  dotted  with  boulders,  in  the 
shadows  of  which  we  could  see  long  ghostly 
fishes  lazily  gliding,  and  a  mud-turtle,  with 
a  trail  of  little  ones,  slowly  moving  from 
rock  to  rock. 

Suddenly  Colin  put  his  hand  to  his  head, 
and  swayed  toward  me,  as  though  he  were 
about  to  faint. 

"I  don't  know  what's  the  matter,  old 
man,"  he  said,  "but  I  think  I  had  better  sit 
down  a  minute."  And  he  sank  by  the  road- 
side. 

Unlike  himself,  he  had  been  complaining 

of  fatigue,  and  had  seemed  out  of  sorts  for 

a  day  or  two,  but  we  had  thought  nothing 

of  it;  and,  after  resting  a  few  minutes,  he 

[192] 


UNEXPECTEDLY  THE  LAST 

announced  himself  ready  for  the  road  again, 
but  he  looked  very  pale  and  walked  with  evi- 
dent weariness.  As  a  roadside  cottage  came 
in  sight,  "I  wonder  if  they  could  give  us  a 
cup  of  tea,"  he  said;  "that  would  fix  me  up, 
I'm  sure."  So  we  knocked,  and  the  door 
was  opened  by  a  pathetic  shadow  of  an  old 
woman,  very  poor  and  thin  and  weary- 
looking,  who,  although,  as  we  presently 
learned,  she  was  at  the  moment  suffering 
from  the  recent  loss  of  one  eye,  made  us  wel- 
come and  busied  herself  about  tea,  with  an 
unselfish  kindness  that  touched  our  hearts, 
and  made  us  reflect  on  the  angelic  goodness 
of  human  nature — sometimes. 

She  looked  anxiously,  mother-like,  at 
Colin,  and  persuaded  him  to  lie  down  and 
rest  awhile  in  her  little  parlour,  and,  while 
he  rested,  she  and  I  talked  and  she  told  me 
how  she  had  come  by  her  blind  eye — an  odd, 
harmless-sounding  cause.  She  had  been 
[193] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

looking  up  into  one  of  her  apple-trees,  one 
day,  a  few  weeks  ago,  and  an  apple  had  fal- 
len and  struck  her  in  the  eye.  Such  inno- 
cent means  does  Nature  sometimes  use  for 
her  cruel  accidents  of  disease  and  death! 
Just  an  apple  falling  from  a  tree, — and  you 
are  blind!  A  fly  stings  you,  on  a  Summer 
day,  and  you  die. 

Colin,  rested  and  refreshed,  we  once  more 
started  on  our  way,  but,  bravely  as  he  strode 
on,  there  was  no  disguising  it — my  blithe, 
happy-hearted  companion  was  ill.  Of 
course  we  both  assured  the  other  that  it 
'could  be  nothing,  but  privately  our  hearts 
sank  with  a  vague  fear  we  did  not  speak. 
i  At  length,  after  a  weary  four  miles,  we 
reached  Towanda. 

"I'm  afraid,"   said  poor  Colin,   "I   can 

walk  no  more   to-day.     Perhaps   a   good 

night's  rest  will  make  me  all  right."    We 

found  an  inn,  and  while  Colin  threw  him- 

[194] 


UNEXPECTEDLY  THE  LAST 

self,  wearied,  on  his  bed,  I  went  out,  not 
telling  him,  and  sought  a  doctor. 

"And  you've  been  walking  with  this  tem- 
perature?" said  the  learned  man,  when  he 
had  seated  himself  at  Colin's  bedside  and 
felt  his  wrist.  "Have  you  been  drinking 
much  water  as  you  went  along?  .  .  .  H'm — 
it's  been  a  very  dry  Summer,  you  know." 

And  the  words  of  our  friend  in  the  buggy 
came  back  to  us  with  sickening  emphasis. 
O  those  innocent-looking  fairy  wells  and 
magic  mirrors  by  the  road-side!  And  I 
thought,  too,  of  the  poor  old  blinded  woman 
and  the  falling  apple.  Was  Nature  really 
like  that? 

And  then  the  wise  man's  verdict  fell  on 
our  ears  like  a  doom. 

"Take  my  advice,  and  don't  walk  any 
more,  but  catch  the  night  train  for  New 
York." 

Poor  Colin!  But  there  was  no  appeal. 
[195] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

The  end  of  our  trip  had  come,  suddenly, 
unreasonably,  stupidly,  like  this. 

"So  we've  got  to  be  shot  into  New  York 
like  a  package  through  a  tube,  after  all!" 
said  Colin.  "No  lordly  gates  of  the  Hud- 
son for  us!  What  a  fool  I  feel,  to  be  the 
one  to  spoil  our  trip  like  this!" 

And  the  tears  glistened  in  our  eyes,  as 
we  pressed  each  other's  hand  in  that  dreary 
inn  bedroom,  with  the  shadow  of  we  knew 
not  what  for  Colin  over  us — for  our  com- 
radeship had  been  very  good,  day  by  day, 
together  on  the  open  road. 

Our  train  did  not  go  till  midnight,  so  we 
had  a  long  melancholy  evening  before  us; 
but  the  doctor  had  given  Colin  some  mys- 
terious potion  containing  rest,  and  pres- 
ently, as  I  sat  by  his  side  in  the  gray  twi- 
light, he  fell  into  a  deep  sleep — a  sleep,  alas ! 
of  fire  and  wandering  talk.  It  was  pitiful  to 
hear  him,  poor  fellow — living  over  again  in 
[196] 


UNEXPECTEDLY  THE  LAST 

dreams  the  road  we  had  travelled,  or  mak- 
ing pictures  of  the  road  he  still  dreamed 
ahead  of  us.  Never  before  had  I  realized 
how  entirely  his  soul  was  the  soul  of  a 
painter— all  pictures  and  colour. 

"O  my  God!"  he  would  suddenly  ex- 
claim, "did  you  ever  see  such  blue  in  your 
life!"  and  then  again,  evidently  referring  to 
some  particularly  attractive  effect  in  the 
phantasmagoria  of  his  fever,  "it's  no  use — 
you  must  let  me  stop  and  have  a  shot  to 
get  that,  before  it  goes." 

One  place  that  seemed  particularly  to 
haunt  him  was — Mauch  Chunk.  He  had 
been  there  before,  and,  as  we  had  walked 
along,  had  often  talked  enthusiastically  of 
it.  "Wait  till  we  get  to  Mauch  Chunk," 
he  said;  "then  the  real  fun  will  begin." 
And  now,  over  and  over  again,  he  kept 
making  pictures  of  Mauch  Chunk,  till  I 
could  have  cried. 

[197] 


OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

"Dramatic  black  rocks,"  he  would  mur- 
mur, "water  rushing  from  the  hills  in  every 
direction — clean-cut,  vivid  scenery — like 
theatres — the  road  runs  by  the  side  of  a 
steel-blue  river  at  the  bottom  of  a  chasm, 
and  there  is  hardly  room  for  it — the  houses 
cling  to  the  hillside  like  swallows'  nests — 
here  and  there  patches  of  fresh  green  grass 
gleam  among  the  rocks,  and,  high  up  in  the 
air  on  some  dizzy  ledge,  there  is  a  wild 
apple-tree  in  blossom — it  is  all  black  rocks 
and  springs  and  moss  and  tumbling 
water " 

Then  again  his  soul  was  evidently  walk- 
ing in  the  Blue  Mountains,  and  several 
times  he  repeated  a  phrase  of  mine  that 
had  taken  his  fancy:  "And  now  for  the 
spacious  corridors  of  the  Highlands,  and 
the  lordly  gates  of  the  Hudson." 

Then  he  would  suddenly  half  awaken  and 
turn  to  me,  realizing  the  truth,  and  say: 
[198] 


UNEXPECTEDLY  THE  LAST 

"O  our  beautiful  journey — to  end  like  this!" 
and  fall  asleep  again. 

And  once  more  I  fell  to  thinking  of  fairy 
springs  by  the  roadside,  and  apples  falling 
innocently  from  the  bough,  and  how  the 
beautiful  journey  we  call  life  might  some 
day  suddenly  end  like  this,  with  half  the 
.beautiful  road  untravelled — the  rest  sleep 

and  perchance  dreams. 

*  *  *  4 

But  Colin  did  not  die.  He  is  once  more 
'painting  out  in  the  sun,  and  next  year  we 
plan  to  stand  again  on  that  very  spot  by  the 
Susquehanna,  and  watch  the  shadows  of 
great  fishes  gliding  through  the  dreamy 
water,  and  the  mud-turtle  with  her  trail  of 
little  ones  moving  from  rock  to  rock — and 
then  we  shall  strike  out  on  the  road  again, 
just  where  we  left  off  that  October  after- 
noon; but  the  reader  need  not  be  afraid — 
we  shall  not  write  a  book  about  it. 
[199] 


ENVOI 

And  now  the  merry  way  we  took 
Is  nothing  but  a  printed  book; 

We  would  you  had  been  really  there, 
Out  with  us  in  the  open  air — 

For,  after  all,  the  best  of  words 
Are  but  a  poor  exchange  for  birds. 

Yet  if,  perchance,  this  book  of  ours 
Should    sometimes    make    you    think    of 
flowers, 

Orchards  and  barns  and  harvest  wain, 
"It  was  not  written  all  in  vain — " 

So  authors  used  to  make  their  bow, 
As,  Gentle  Reader,  we  do  now. 


[  200  ] 


L201] 


OCT  16    1947 
OCT16    1947 


LD  21-100m-12,'46(A2012sl6)4120 


952 

L4S 


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